


Spirit Week

by TheOriginalSangster



Series: After School Specials [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2018-12-04 00:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 53,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11544003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOriginalSangster/pseuds/TheOriginalSangster
Summary: The events of Spider-Man: Homecoming from Michelle’s perspective.But this guy had powers. Real powers, Avengers-level powers. Why was a guy like that out there? What was he doing helping old ladies cross the street in Queens? Shouldn't he be fighting robots or aliens? Why weren't they working with the purple guy or Black Widow?





	1. The Spider Menace

 

Midtown High was buzzing with excitement. The Homecoming committee had begun decorating the campus in banners celebrating the upcoming game and dance. Students that didn’t have dates were suddenly scrambling to find someone to go with, while others were trying to act like they didn’t care that their significant others hadn't asked them to go with them yet.

It was everything that Michelle hated about the high school experience.

She was already at her desk when the first bell rang that morning. She was deeply absorbed in her copy of Henry James’s _The Wings of the Dove_ as the rest of the class filtered into their homeroom calculus class. She didn’t look up, she never did. She couldn't see the point.

None of her classmates mornings could be as interesting as the tragic journey of Milly Theale. No one at Midtown was as romantic or dramatic as any of the characters that Michelle found in her books, so she never saw the point in bothering with them. It was for the best, she didn’t want them to bother with her.

The second bell rang and Michelle glanced up to see if she would have to reposition herself at all to hide her reading from her teacher. Peter Parker was sitting at the table across from her opening a laptop. The screen provided a decent obstacle in the line of sight between herself and the front of the class, it would serve as adequate cover for her to turn back to her book.

She could hear her teacher reading off the attendance sheet and gave her half of her attention until she heard her name called.

“Michelle?”

She raised her hand wordlessly without looking up and cringing inside. Something about her name never felt right. People were always giving her finger guns and saying ‘you got it dude’ in reference to a TV show none of them were old enough to watch but all seemed obligated to reference. It bothered her, but not as much as people realizing that she could be bothered.

She dove right back into Milly’s world, where Kate had just revealed her true intentions to Densher. He was to marry Milly instead of her so he could inherit her great fortune after her incumbent death. It was riveting and tawdry, as Denshrer would only agree to Kate’s plan if they could consummate their relationship. Michelle didn’t want to put it down but she could hear her teachers voice shifting into a question and knew that she had to at least pretend to look engaged.

Peter Parker clearly hadn’t heard the change in inflection. He was watching a video of some spider guy on YouTube that had been getting shared around the school. She hadn't actually seen it herself, YouTube and social media all seemed a bit desperate to her. Yet she found herself watching with rapt attending as some masked guy in sweatpants swung between a bus and a car, stopping a collision with his bare hands.

“Peter?”

Michelle found herself jumping with Peter when he was called on. She had been so engrossed with what she was seeing that she forgot where she was. “Still with us?” The teacher asked.

Peter quickly shut the computer before correctly answering the question that Michelle had missed entirely. She supposed Flash had been trying to show-off unsuccessfully because now her teacher was teasing him. But she didn’t really care.

She looked back down at her book but the story seemed to have lost some of the shine it had had before she looked away from it. She was replaying the video over in her head. She would have thought it was fake but she had heard people talking about some guy in a mask and spandex suit that had been rescuing cats and stopping pickpockets around the neighborhood. She had just thought he was some harmless nutcase that had decided to try and change the world for the marginally better.

But this guy had powers. Real powers, Avengers-level powers. Why is there was a guy like that out there? What was he doing helping old ladies cross the street in Queens? Shouldn't he be fighting robots or aliens? Why weren't they working with the purple guy or Black Widow?

The bell rang shaking her out of her thoughts when she realized that she had been staring at the back of Peter’s head for the rest of class. She quickly looked away and swept up her books getting out of class as quickly as she could. She had alway tried to be stealthy whenever she was watching him.

She didn't like him. She hated him less than most people, but it wasn't because she was a girl and he was a boy and their hormones were driving them to act irrationally. Michelle had studied enough about the body’s physical responses to puberty, the hormonal surges that were only made more incendiary when surrounded by the pheromones of other young human bodies going through the same physical transformations and chemical imbalances to recognize when she was experiencing them.

Michelle did not have a crush on Peter Parker, but there was something going on under the surface of that perfectly benign white boy that Michelle couldn’t put her finger on. She had always been excellent at reading people, but for some reason Peter Parker, despite all the evidence, eluded her.

Things had gotten weirder over the past month or so when he got an internship at Stark Industries. He was visibly distracted and always watching the clock. He had been quietly dropping all his extracurricular activities all because he wanted to be on hand to get coffee for Tony Stark’s secretary or whatever it was that he did. Like everything else about Peter Parker, it didn’t add up.

She slowly made her way to the chemistry lab without looking up from her book. She never had to worry about running into anyone anymore, most of the student body had figured her out and parted like the red sea as she walked down the halls. Or at least they had ever since Jason Ionello ran into her last year and destroyed his physics project.

Michelle maintains no responsibility for that incident.

Chemistry wasn’t Michelle’s favorite subject. She didn’t hate chemistry, she was pretty neutral on the subject. She hated chemistry class, it felt like they were just asking for problems. It didn’t help that most of the kids in the class were far too enthusiastic about the prospect of creating explosive reactions.

She was working on her lab notes when she noticed Peter from the corner of her eye. He was looking around in a way that he probably considered to be inconspicuous. Michelle thought he looked like a kid on a street corner looking out for his buddies while they vandalized property.

She turned around to tell him to pull his shit together when he suddenly dropped down behind his lab table.

This was the kind of thing that had her convinced that Peter was hiding something. It really shouldn't have been as difficult for Michelle to crack it. He wasn’t exactly stealthy.  
  
By the time lunch rolled around she had managed to put the video from that morning out of her mind entirely. She didn’t even think about it again until Ned and Peter took their regular seats at her table and the guy on Peter’s laptop swung back into her head.

She had so many questions, her mind went into overdrive. She had seen him on the news recently, but he was just saving cats or helping construction workers. He clearly had been noticed by the Avengers at some point. He had a new costume that looked much more professional than the sweats that he was wearing in the video Peter was watching. But if he was on the Avengers radar shouldn't he be out saving the world or whatever it is they do? Did they not get along? Did he and Iron Man get in a fight, but instead of becoming an enemy of the state like Captain America he had been regulated to directing traffic?

She decided to try and listen in on Peter and Ned’s conversation, they might know more about the guy than she did, which was admittedly nothing. At the very least she might figure out what Peter was hiding and she could move on with her life.

“Did Liz get a new top?” Peter pondered dreamily.

It was moments like this when she wondered if maybe she had been reading too far into Peter Parker.

He and Ned were staring at Liz Toomes, captain of the debate team, chairman of the homecoming committee and the all around image of a perfect teenage girl. Michelle also knew that Liz had a real mean streak and took her responsibilities way too seriously. Michelle considered Liz to be more of a cartoon of a classic high school girl than a real person, not that it was a bad thing, it was just boring.

Ned and Peter were practically drooling, they couldn't even try to mask how gross they were acting. She wondered how long it would take them to get a hold of themselves.

Almost as if on cue, Peter told Ned that they should stop staring before it got creepy.

“Too late” Michelle quipped, unable to contain herself.

The boys both whipped around looking horrified to have been found out. She found this to be endlessly entertaining.

“You guys are losers.” She added, before turning back to her book.

“Then why do you sit with us?” Asked Ned.

“Because I don’t have any friends.” She offered simply. It wasn’t something she was sensitive about. Michelle sat there because it was open, she liked having the extra space. No one at this school was interested in talking about real problems, they just wanted to argue about the last TV show they had just finished binge-watching or whatever studio tentpole was dominating the box-office that weekend and she couldn’t pretend like she cared enough to even bother.

For a while, she had tried to find some common ground with Cindy Moon and Sally Avril, but it was too much work for her to make an effort to get to know them. They were both nice and smart, but they seemed about as invested in building a meaningful friendship with her as she was with them. It was easier just to be on her own.

Unfortunately, a High School cafeteria is an impossible place to try and be alone. The archaic social norms of the lunch table hierarchy were alive and well. Even a school of brainiacs like Midtown had isolated its outcasts at their own sad lonely table., however, it did come with some obnoxious side effects.

“Penis Parker!”

Michelle looked over her shoulder at Flash Thompson who was now hovering over Ned and Peter wearing a coprophagous grin.

“Had to be a show off in calculus this morning? You think making me look stupid will help you and Ned escape the sad fate of some Anthony Michale Hall character?” Michelle rolled her eyes, sometimes Flash leaned into his own stereotype of a rich asshole so far that it stunned her.

“I- I- didn't - I wasn’t trying-“ Peter was stammering.

“Of course not, you're just trying to say a good little boy for your sexy aunt?” He said with a wink making everyone who saw it deeply uncomfortable while making Michelle, personally, want to vomit.

She couldn’t stand Flash. He was loud and bombastic in the obnoxious way that people seemed to misinterpret as confident. He wasn’t cool, but he needed to feel like he was better than someone so he singled out Peter because Peter didn’t fight back.

As expected Peter stared down at his lunch tray. Michelle could see that he was frustrated and angry. She weirdly respected him for holding back in the face of such idiocy. Flash was laughing to himself when he saw Michelle staring him down and froze.

Flash was afraid of her. A lot of kids were. She had worked hard at cultivating an image that clearly said ‘I will light your hair on fire’ to keep people from asking her too many questions about herself. It had become particularly handy in dealing with spoiled jerks like Flash.

“Hey Thompson, I meant to ask if your dad is still profiting off of the indentured servitude of refugees or has the Department of Labor finally managed to shut him down?” She asked.

Flash looked both horrified and infuriated in the same moment, this wasn’t a fight he could win and Michelle knew it. He tried to make some kind of intimidating gesture towards New and Peter, although she imagined it was difficult to seem threatening when you have just been publicly emasculated.

“Thanks” She heard Peter squeak.

“Didn’t do it for you.” She said turning back to her book and the comforting world of fiction. Where stories have structure, actions have consequences, and shitty people get their comeuppance in the end.

The rest of the day dragged on until the last bell finally rang out and Michelle quickly ducked into the small auditorium for Academic Decathlon practice. She hadn’t been particularly interested in joining the team when she first heard about it, it had taken a significant about of begging on the part of Mr. Harrington as well as her personal desire to get her guidance counselor off her back before she eventually gave in, it was better than going home after school.

She set herself up in the corner of the room. She never really practiced at these scheduled team practices. Liz had tried to engage her at first but eventually gave up when she realized it was pointless. Michelle knew what she knew and playing advanced Trivial Pursuit wasn’t going to help her excel any more than she would without it.

The rest of the team filtered in, Abe and Cindy were quizzing each other on the principals of gamma radiation follows by Charles and Sally, their second alternate, who was combing through textbooks to find new questions for Liz. Ned and Peter came in together, Ned was rambling excitedly about something while Peter was looking distracted.

Flash was the last to get there but it hardly mattered. He was the first alternate and had never answered a question correctly, so Mr. Harrington and Liz had started without him.

“Mr. Harrington? Could I talk to you about something?” Michelle heard Peter say quietly as the rest of the team began reviewing details of the periodic table.

She had wondered how long it was going to take him to quit the team. Peter had clearly been trying to free up his calendar for months. It wasn't just for the Stark Internship, it had started months before that. She assumed the only thing that had kept him on the team was Liz. Now that the season was almost over it had only been a matter of time. He had no idea how much it was going to upset the rest of the team.

“No. NoNoNoNo.” She heard Cindy panicking.

“Really Peter? Right before nationals?” Liz asked looking at him with big brown doe eyes peeking through her unbelievably long eyelashes.

Peter was one of the strongest players on the team. He might have better things going on in his life but the rest of them were counting on winning nationals to help them to get into college. The only thing that surpassed Michelle was how surprised the rest of them were.

“He already quit the marching band and robotics lab,” Michelle noted.

Honestly, for a group of know-it-alls, it was amazing none of them saw this coming. However instead of seeing her deductive reasoning for what it was everyone just seemed surprised the most basic details of Peter Parker’s life and were all staring at her now.

“I’m not obsessed with him, just very observant.” She quickly added before turning back to her book.

That was true. She knew more about any of her teammates than any of them knew about her. She knew Sally had been taking photography classes behind her parent’s backs, she knew Abe’s brother had been arrested for stealing a car last year. She knew Cindy’s mom had pulled her out of her old school when she found out that she had a boyfriend and was ‘wasting her potential’. She knew that Abe and Cindy were crazy about each other, but neither one had enough nerve to do anything about it.

And then there was Peter, the guy who was now running out the door while Flash jumped onto the stage gleefully taking his spot. Peter’s parents both died in The Incident with the Avengers eight years ago, that was when he moved in with his Aunt and Uncle. He was a smart kid, but he was also an idiot. His uncle was killed last year, the guy who shot him got away. It was around that time when Peter started acting strangely, at least when Michelle began to notice. Back then she had assumed he was just grieving and let him have his space.

Things kept getting weirder from there. He had taken a much more active interest in chemistry. She would see him in the library studying bioengineering and had seen him stealing supplies from the science lab a few times. He was spending less time with Ned, but not in a morose, withdrawn sad kid way. He just always seemed like he had somewhere to be. When he got the Stark Internship and it was almost like a perfect excuse had dropped into his lap.

To be clear, Michelle didn’t think that Peter was lying about the internship, although Flash and Charles certainly did. Michelle was always suspicious when things got convenient. She had been keeping an eye on him ever since.

She wasn’t obsessed with him she told herself. He was a puzzle that was missing a few pieces. Michelle could never resist a puzzle.

The rest of practice was unbearable. Flash kept repeatedly ringing in with the wrong answers driving Cindy into a mild panic attack. When they finally wrapped up Mr. Harrington was the first one out the door, probably so no one would see him crying in his car. Ned sprinted out after him saying something about a Lego set. Michelle was packing up her books ready to go when Liz stopped them.

“I’m having some people over tomorrow night, I’d love it if you guys could make it.” She asked smiling sweetly “I know the suburbs might as well be Australia for a lot of you but I was thinking maybe -“

“Party at Liz’s place! Awesome!” Yelled Flash, “Can I DJ?”

Michelle almost bit her tongue off trying to stop herself from laughing. Abe was not so self-effacing and let out a thunderous laugh punctuating each ‘HA’ with a ring of his bell.

Charles shot him a withering stare but Flash didn’t seem bothered by it.

“I’ll make a deal with you Flash, I will let you DJ my party tomorrow night if you promise not to try and answer any Decathlon questions until after nationals,” Liz proposed pulling herself up to her full height and looking down on Flash from above.

Flash seemed hurt and offended but was also considering his options as the rest of the team looked on hoping against hope that he would take the deal and give them at least a shot at a Nationals title this year. Finally, he shrugged and shook Liz’s hand before turning around looking at them somehow triumphant.

“You all better be there, you aren’t gonna want to miss a DJ Flash set, It will change. Your Life.” he yelled at them hands up in the air before letting out a loud ‘Whoo’ on his way out the door followed quickly by Charles.

The rest of the team just watched the door in stunned silence for a minute before they let out a collective sigh of relief.

“We might not have Peter anymore but at least now we don’t have to worry about Flash sabotaging us,” Cindy suggested.

“I just hope that the promise of ‘DJ Flash’ doesn’t scare the rest you off, I would love to have you all there, seriously.” said Liz.

“I think it's the least we can do for you, I don’t think we can let you suffer alone for us.” Michelle suggested, she had no desire to go out to the suburbs, and even less to be at a party, but what Liz had done for them was cool and if she really wanted them to be there it was literarily the least she could do.

“I can drive us” Sally offered as the others set up a carpool to get out to Liz’s house. Michelle finished packing up her books and left without another word. She stopped at her locker and gathered up the rest of her books, and made her way out of the school and up the steps to the train platform.

She didn’t have anything to read. She had finished all of her books and was looking at a 20-minute train ride and she didn’t even have a book of poetry to thumb through. She would have usually sketched checked-out people on the train under these circumstances, but she had left her sketchbook at home this morning.

Reluctantly she pulled out her phone to look for something to keep her mind busy. Michelle despised reading anything on on the internet. She knew how old that made her sound but it was the truth. It was all click-bait and conjecture. It was too easy to filter the real world as it suited your own personal biases. As she unlocked he phone she suddenly remembered the video she had seen Peter watching that morning.

She typed ‘Spider Man Queens NY’ into the search engine, reminding herself to regard anything that might show up with a healthy amount of skepticism as she waited for the page to load.

‘SPIDER MENACE TERRORIZING QUEENS RESIDENTS’

Michelle almost choked when she read the first headline that appeared in her browser. It was from the DailyBugle, a website that was so thirsty for page views you would think their offices were in the middle of the Gobi Desert.

She scrolled down until she found a piece called ‘SPIDER VIGILANTE SPOTTED IN LONG ISLAND’ that seemed credible and was instantly disappointed to see that it was just a few lines long.

Anxiously Michelle began to make her way through every article she could find on the Spider-Man. No one seemed to know anything about him despite the fact that he always was around. It didn't take long before she had read everything that had been written about the Spider-Man over the past four months, including the almost weekly coverage from the DailyBugle on what they considered to be a perfect example of millennial entitlement and wasteful government spending.

People were not letting the little detail of not knowing anything about him stop them from making him a symbol for all of the things that the DailyBugle readers hated about the changing world.

Michelle read it all, regardless of how ridiculous or biased it seemed. She was desperate to learn whatever she could about the masked man that was swinging around her neighborhood. The whole situation seemed so bizarre, and she has done a biology project on the work of Bruce Banner a year ago. Somehow Michelle stepped off the train feeling like she knew even less about the Spider-Man than when she had first started down that rabbit hole.

Her mind was still swimming in questions about the Spider-Man who she got to the library. Where had he come from? How had he gotten his powers? Was he even human? There were a lot of people out there that didn’t trust him, after all, the Avengers were out in the open. Everyone knew who they were. This guy wore a mask and was hiding. Why?

Michelle was so absorbed that she didn’t even stop to say hello to Valerie, the librarian that Michelle had spent every afternoon with Monday through Friday ever since her mom moved her sister and her out to Queens ten years ago. Valerie was very upset to be ignored and let Michelle know it in a tone that was shockingly loud for a librarian.

“No one cares!” Valarie snorted when Michele reminded her of that small part of her job description. “The only people who come to this library are the homeless either looking for work or occasionally trying to get away with masturbating. And you.” Valarie added, hoping to shake the stone faced teenager that had the gall to talk back to her.

Michelle loved Valerie, she was one of the only consistent people in her life. She didn’t have any family of her own so she had always treated Michelle like a daughter, or granddaughter. She was much older than Michelle’s parents but it hardly showed. She had a mind like a steel trap and played tennis three times a week. Sometimes Michelle was disappointed that Valarie wasn't really her grandmother and she didn’t have her genes. Then she would be reminded that Valerie was probably the meanest old lady she had ever met and counted herself lucky to have one less explosive personality around the dinner table at Thanksgiving.

She would ask Michelle about her day at school; if she had read any good books or seen any cute boys. Michelle would tell her that everything had been outlandishly average much to Valerie’s disappointment.

“Then what had you daydreaming when you came in here walking by me like I was no better than some background player in your quirky independent comedy you call a life?” She asked after Michelle fed her the regular report.

Michelle rolled her eyes and pulled out her phone. “It’s nothing, I was just thinking about this guy…” She asked bringing up a grainy photo of the Spider-Man to show Valerie,”Have you heard about this one?”

Valerie looked as though she had just bit into a lemon when she saw the picture. “I don’t know who he thinks he is but I am not a fan of any of those jumpsuit heroes. We never had these sorts of disasters when I was growing up. Aliens, and cities crashing into the earth. Army’s of super-robots and we’re all supposed to be grateful when an arms dealer teams up with a Greek myth to save us?” Valarie was on a good rant now, she wasn't likely to slow down anytime soon. “And this one-“ she said waving Michelle’s phone back in her face “Won’t even show his face? Why should we trust him?”

“Trust who?” Someone else asked seeping up to the information desk. It was Peter Parker’s aunt, May Parker. She was a friend of Michelle’s aunt Anna, they had been a part of several neighborhood protests together.

Valarie had slid the phone across to Mrs. Parker who looked at it and shrugged. “He seems pretty harmless to me, although it does concern me the kind of example those Avengers are setting for these kids,” Mrs. Parker said, gesturing at Michelle who in turn turned to Mrs. Parker and stared at her in a way that always seemed to make adults feel uncomfortable and old. It didn’t take much to intimate Mrs. Parker sliding the phone back to Michelle.

Michelle had always liked Peter’s aunt. She ran her own small publishing house and had been a frequent figure around her aunt’s house when Michelle would stay with her on the weekends when she was still too little to be left home alone. She just hated it when people talked about her like she wasn’t there, if she wanted to disappear she could do that easily without any help.

Mrs. Parker was holding copies of her latest petition that would be circulating a protest Aunt Anna had planned for next week. They had been very upset with the recent Sokovia Accords deal and the kind of power that it openly to give to civilians like Tony Stark. Michelle had known for a while that Peter’s Aunt was not a fan of her nephew’s new boss, but she did everything she could stand to hid it from him.

Michelle gave her and Valarie a nod before leaving them and heading into the stacks to her favorite table. She didn’t really feel like arguing the merits and impediments presented by the world with enhanced people in it. Whether or not she agreed with their actions it was just a reality that they now live in a world where they exist and had to learn how to deal with it.

She spread out all her books and started her homework, it wouldn't take her too long, she wanted to get it out of the way in case she found a particularly good book that evening. Schoolwork had never been a challenge for her, at least not the parts of school that seemed challenging to everyone else. She never worried about algebra tests or getting her work done. It was the other part of the high school that presented the real challenge of Michelle. Socialization; making friends with people that will help you cope with your changing bodies or whatever the school therapists were always droning on about. Michelle couldn't see the point in trying, most kids were idiots.

She finished up her calculus work and then wandered around the stacks until closing. Michelle had always felt most at peace in the presence of books. Her father had been a professor of literature when she was a baby. Whenever she thinks back to her earliest, happiest memories, she is always surrounded by thick leather bound tomes.

Her father's books were long gone now, not that her family apartment would have been big enough to hold them. The library was the only place that Michelle could feel that sort of childlike comfort. She would spend countless hours wandering around looking for the next story to let herself become consumed by.

Today she was particularly excited by her choices, she had found a copy of Evelyn Waugh’s early satire A Handful of Dust, she had already read his more well-known novels, but hadn’t been able to find a copy of Dust until that afternoon. She had also picked up a copy of Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. She knew that it was widely considered to be a masterpiece, but she had never been a huge fan of an author leaning too much on their autobiographical experiences in works of fiction. She had the same problem with Fitzgerald. Around closing Valerie found her to let her know and handed her a copy of Lincoln in the Bardo that had just come back in. Michelle wasn’t much a fan of contemporary fiction, but she would make an exception for anything Valerie recommended to her.

She would always stay until closing and leave with Valerie as she shut off the lights and locked the doors before they would each leave in their respected directions. It was the worst part of Michelle’s day. She had nothing else to do but imagine what she would come home to. Maybe it would be empty, dark, cold and quiet. That would be the best case scenario. Her mother and step-father, Frank, would drink and fight late into most nights. That was the more likely scenario. But as much as she hated these regular screaming matches she knew that it was never as bad as the worst case scenario.

She climbed up the stairs to her tiny families two-bedroom apartment. It had been more comfortable since her sister Gayle left last year. Michelle didn’t like to think about Gayle. Her mother had always made it clear that she was her favorite daughter. Gayle was gorgeous and graceful, she had wanted to be a dancer and her mother had done everything in her power to try and help her become a star. She had worked two jobs to keep her in dance classes and was signed her up for countless pageants and talent shows.

When Gayle got pregnant before she even graduated high school it was the most upset Michelle had seen ever seen her mother She threw her out of the building without another word. Michelle missed her sister and hated what had happened to her, but she also understood everything that her mother had given up for Gayle. Michelle couldn't understand how she could have been so stupid.

She could hear the screaming before she even reached their floor. It was the worst case scenario; her father had made one of his semi-regular stops to get in a fist fight with Frank and scream at her mother.

Michelle had been seeing these fights her whole life. For a long time she never even considered that there had been anything wrong with it. It wasn’t until her mother finally left her father after he hit Gayle in a rage that Michelle ever even considered that her parents weren't what a happy marriage looked like. She had felt like such an idiot for not knowing any better. She was just a kid and she had loved her father like any child would, she wished she had known better.

Now she did. She knew better than to try to stop them, she knew better than to even try to slip past them. Ever since her mother threw Gayle out Michelle was the only pawn left for her parents to fight over. She turned left instead of right heading towards The Gonzales’s apartment at the end of the hall.

The Gonzales’s had a baby that Michelle assumed to be around the same age as her niece or nephew. She had never met her sister’s baby, they hadn't spoken since she left home. She was a regular babysitter for the Gonzales’s though and they were thrilled to have her, Mr. Gonzales was a cop and was almost always working graveyard shifts. His wife Mrs. Gonzales was a temp and a housecleaner and a telemarketer. She had been on her own since she was Michelle’s age was always instinctively looking out for herself and her friends.They were both determined to make a better life for their son, Noah.

Michelle knew they would be happy to let her camp out in their kitchen for a little while. She had always been there when they needed her in case Mr. Gonzales couldn't get his dad or sister to help them out and the owed her a few favors by now.

Sure enough, when she knocked on the door she was greeted by Mrs. Gonzales who looked ready to kiss her.  
“Thank god! I was about to call you!” She cried grabbing Michelle’s arm and pulled her into their home. The Gonzales’s apartment was exactly the same as Michelle’s mothers, and yet it always felt more like a home than her apartment did.

Mrs. Gonzales was pulling on a pair of shoes and she was throwing her keys and glasses into her purse.

“I just got called in, I didn’t know what to do I just sent David home. I heard what was happening down the hall and I thought you might be staying at a friends house.” Michelle tried not to roll her eyes. People had friends for exactly this reason. This was the thing her counselors were always so concerned about.

“Vin will be home by midnight, and Noah’s already eaten so you just need to put him down” Mrs. Gonzalez explained as and she gave Noah a kiss goodbye. He was bouncing in his play-pin infant of the television which was always on, night and day. Mrs. Gonzalez thanked her several more times as she quickly slipped out the door. Michelle wasn’t surprised at her abrupt exit., Mrs. Gonzalez never could stay still and cold never turn down a job. She refused to give up her dog walking gig until she was 8 months pregnant.

Michelle dumped her books and bag in a pile on the floor. She picked up Noah, amazed at how big he had grown. He smiled at her with his big puffy baby cheeks and poked her nose.

“MmLaay,” He slowly articulated.

He was only just beginning to turn sounds into words, “EmLay” was as close as he had managed to get to ‘Michelle’.

She was going to go check out what leftovers Mr. Gonzales’s father might have stored away for her to feast on when the ‘Special Report’ graphic flashed on the local news.

The Spider-Man had stopped an ATM robbery that had gone sideways and somehow blew up Delmar’s Deli. Michelle sat staring at the TV in shock while Noah blew spit bubbles. No one had been hurt, but Delmar’s was destroyed. She personally preferred Sub Haven, but that wasn't the point.

These sort of thing didn’t happen around here. Not after the incident when she was a kid. Any city was filled with nasty people you had to watch your back around, but a few low-life criminals with weapons that could turn a deli to rubble wasn't the kind of thing that you could avoid with street-smarts. Maybe Valarie and May Parker had a point about these enhanced heroes?

She supposed it was good that the Spider-Man had been there. A lot of talking heads on the news were blaming him for escalating the problem, but Michelle doubted anyone would have even been paying attention to an ATM robbery using crazy weapons in their neighborhood if Spider-Man hadn't shown up. Spider-Man would get word of the problem on to the Avengers radar and it would get solved peacefully before anyone gets hurt. For some reason, Michelle trusted the Spider-Man. She had a feeling in her gut that he was one of the good guys, not the type of manic the DailyBugle made him out to be.

She heard a door slam down the hall. It was her father. He was the only one who ever made all the windows on the floor vibrate when he left. Noah started to cry. She couldn't stand seeing his big cheeks burning red when he cried. He looked like his head might pop right off. Michelle held him close and sang him a song that an old neighbor used to play all the time when she had first moved into the building.

Everyone who had ever heard Michelle sing had told her she had a gift. It wasn't a large number of people, but their reviews were all consistent. She had never been looking for that kind of praise. Gayle had been the star of the family. Michelle was the smart one, the girl that was too clever to chase after some hopeless dream like singing in Carnegie Hall. 

She never sang in public anymore. She kept that side of herself private. She only shared it with Noah when he was crying.

She held him like that for a while, swaying softly until Michelle had sung Noah to sleep. Later she would tuck him into his crib, find some macaroni and cheese in the fridge for dinner and crack open _A Handful of Dust_  reading until Mr. Gonzalez got home and relieved her. For now, she was happy to let the world melt away around them.

Michelle’s mother and stepfather were asleep when she came home. The whole apartment was wrecked. There were broken bits of glass from the photos that had been on the walls when she left them. One of the chairs from the kitchen had been smashed into pieces. Michelle carefully tip-toed through the mess into her room and curled up in her bed.

She craned her head just right so she could see a small sliver of the night's sky between the buildings outside her window. She could never see stars in the city, there was too much light pollution to see them out here. Instead, she would imagine the stars hanging in that small sliver of the night's sky until she drifted into a dreamless sleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smash buttons if you dig it


	2. Pretty in Pink

Michelle had not expected to enjoy _Of Human Bondage_ as much as she was. It was the story of a boy that had been orphaned at a young age and sent to live with his Aunt and Uncle before being sent off again to boarding school. It follows his life as he manages to squander every stroke of good fortune that came his way.

She couldn’t deny that Philip, the protagonist of the book, had at least a passing resemblance to the boy sitting in front of her in gym class whispering with Ned Leeds.

She would absolutely deny that she enjoyed Philip’s character because of this very resemblance, even if it was true.

It was far from a perfect book. All the women seemed to be hollow figures that all were just stand-ins for the author & protagonists' quite beloved and very dead mother. There is the waitress from the tea shop, Mildred, who he falls desperately in love with but she leaves him for another man. There was Norah, the girl he settled for when he couldn't have the girl he wanted, who he unceremoniously dumped when Mildred came back to him begging him to take care of her baby and her before she would later leave him again for another man, again.

And then there was Fanny Price, the young art student that Philip met while studying to be a painter in France. She was talentless, despite working harder than anyone else in her class. She stayed determined and headstrong. Michelle had liked her from the second she stepped onto the page. She was poor but confident. She was without social graces and would never listen to her critics. She was exactly the type of song independent women that Michelle liked to see in her fiction.

Fanny had fallen deeply in love with Philip but he never knew how she felt. Heartbroken and starving, she sent Philip a letter asking to come visit her but when he arrived all he found was her lifeless body hanging in her room.

That had been a particularly devastating passage for Michelle. She couldn't remember the last time anything in her real life made her feel heartbreak like the words on that page had. It was it impossible for her to try and put the book down. Not even to watch Coach Wilson invariably make a fool of himself in front of her gym class.

They were starting the Captain’s Physical Fitness Challenge that week, which was the only week of the year that the Gym teachers at New York’s top STEM schools were actually expected to make a bunch of pasty nerds, like them, break a sweat. Midtown was known for dominating Mock Trial competitions and Science Fairs. It was a safe bet that they would lose their Homecoming game next week. No one really expected Coach Wilson to be working with any gifted athletes, however, they still had to meet the minimum state requirements.

Michelle didn’t have to meet any requirement. She and coach Wilson had an understanding. He understood her to be some creepy goth kid that was into voodoo and witchcraft, and she understood that he would just give her passing marks regardless of her total lack of participation because he was afraid of her.

After the old Captain America video wrapped up, everyone scattered around the gym to start on the state-mandated drills. Michelle made herself comfortable on one of the floor mats and started bench pressing her book. It was a fairly heavy book after all.

She lay there reading for the rest of the period as all her peers rotated around the various timed exercises. The whole test was totally antiquated anyway. There was no way the state could properly assess student health by looking at the average number of sit-ups a 15-year-old can do in ten minutes.

It was close to the end of the period when Ned yelled something across the gym that caught Michelle off guard.

“Peter knows Spider-Man!”

The whole room froze, not so much as a sneaker squeaked against the glossy floorboards for a moment. Everyone was staring at Peter, Michelle among them. She tried not to look as interested as she really was in whatever he would say next.

She had been trying to understand Peter’s odd behavior for months, wasted countless hours trying to uncover whatever secret second life he was hiding. It couldn't be as simple as Ned just shouting the truth out in gym class.

Peter was scrambling to his feet stammering “No!I don’t No! I mean…” He was visibly panicking. Michelle would have thought it was funny if weren't also so riveting.

Suddenly Flash dropped down from one of the climbing ropes where he had probably been waiting to make an entrance after one of those classic dramatic revelations that always happened in gym classes.

“Their friends.” Ned went on, Peter still seemed pretty blindsided by this turn of events.

“Yeah like coach Wilson and Captain America are friends.” Flash snarked.

“I’ve met him, yeah, a couple of times,” Peter slowly squeaked “but it’s, um, through the Stark Internship.”

A weird light bulb went off in the corner of Michelle’s mind. It wasn't a breakthrough, but it was a new lead.

“But I’m not really supposed to talk about it!” she heard Peter say as he turned to look at Ned like he was going to melt all his action figures

“Well, that’s awesome!” Flash teased, “Hey! you know what? Maybe you should invite him to Liz’s party? Right?” 

“Yeah, um, I’m having people over tonight, you're more than welcome to come,” Liz smiled.

“You're having a party?” Peter asked quietly.

“Yeah, it's going to be dope. You should totally invite your personal friend Spider-Man,” Flash joked.

Peter was looking dumbstruck. Michelle had completely forgotten about Liz’s party and her very public promise to be there. Now she was wondering how she could get out of it. Liz’s house would be a zoo if word got the Spider-Man might show up. Even if the word was coming from a worthless sentient garbage bag like Flash Thompson.

“It's okay. I know Peter is way too busy for parties anyway.” Michelle couldn't help but respect Liz for her expertly thrown shade.

“Oh come on, he’ll be there right Parker?” boasted Flash.

Peter was saved by the bell. Everyone parted and made their way to their respected locker rooms.

Michelle could hear Betty laying into Michelle as she changed back into her street clothes.

“I just don’t understand why you had to invite all your lame debate friends tonight.”

“Decathlon.” Liz corrected her, “And they're not lame.”

Michelle had to disagree with her on that.

“Besides, if I hadn't invited them then Spider-Man wouldn't be coming to my party!”

Michelle couldn't see Liz’s face. Was she joking? Did she really think that the Spider-Man, who stopped a bank robbery last night, would show up to a party with a bunch of high-school kids?

Unfortunately for Michelle, Betty had all the wrong questions.

“You don’t really think that twelve-year-old knows Spider-Man?” She asked.

“I wouldn't be surprised. That internship he keeps going on about is the real deal. He showed me this video of him and Tony Stark coming back from some kind of leadership retreat.” Liz explained.

Maybe they were the right questions after all.

Michelle heard them both closing their lockers and made a move to follow them from a safe distance, but as soon as she stepped out of the locker room she was accosted by the rest of the Decathlon team.

“We were just making sure you weren't going to ditch us tonight,” spat Cindy.

“Why would I ditch you?” Asked Michelle, who had been considering ditching them just moments before. “I was the one who said that we should go to thank Liz for taking the 'DJ Flash' bullet for the team.”

“But that was before Spider-Man was coming-“

“Allegedly coming.” Added Michelle.

“-And now Flash has invited half the school to come see him ‘spin’” sputtered Cindy, she was talking faster the longer was allowed to go on.

Michelle wondered how Flash had managed to get the word out about Liz’s special guest star so quickly, but she was never too surprised at how quickly stupid seemed to spread around Flash.

“We just wanted to make sure you weren't going to bail on us.” Sally sighed. putting a hand on Cindy’s shoulder.

“Or if you are, let us know now so we don’t sit around waiting for you to not show up.” Abraham declared, obviously sick of the others attempt at being diplomatic.

It bothered Michelle that they all thought she would just abandon them without a word. Although, if she were to have abandoned them, that was exactly how she would do it.

“I’ll be there, I made a promise to you guys and to Liz. I’ll meet you out in front of the school at…” Michelle hated that she couldn't remember the rendezvous time at this moment, it made her look like such a hypocrite.

“Seven,” said Cindy coldly.

“Seven?” Asked Michelle, surprised at how early they were leaving. Liz lived in the suburbs, not Connecticut.

“We're bringing ice,” Sally explained, as though that was somehow an explanation. Michelle knew she was not in a position to win a debate with any of them and just nodded instead.

“Seven. Great. I will see you all then.” Michelle groaned through her teeth and turning away on her heel. Her teammates were all kind and genuine people, they were just a bit too kind and genuine, they sometimes made her teeth hurt. They reminded her of her sister, always good and considerate, always finding some way to look down on her. She was objectively smarter than any of them. She was looked down on by no one.

She was trying to make sense of the new information that had come out about Peter that in class about working for Spider-Man as she was on her way to the library after school. It certainly answered some questions. But like everything with him, it raised more than it answered.

Things had been off with him long before his internship started. It was the outlying error in her data.

Peter’s timelines never made any sense. It was like Westworld without any of the playoffs. The idea that his work was of a sensitive nature and he had been keeping it a secret at first had occurred to her, but then why was Tony Stark trusting a fifteen-year-old kid with information to could anyway be considered to be sensitive.

Then there was the question of the video that Liz had mentioned after class. Michelle hadn’t seen it herself, but it sounded like Tony Stark, billionaire, Avenger playboy, the most famous person in the world, had taken some kind of special interest in a perfectly ordinary kid. Peter Parker was smart, but he wasn't any kind of prodigy.

And why the hell was Tony Stark sending Peter Parker to leadership conferences?

“Why the long face?” Asked Valerie when she saw Michelle walk in the library that afternoon.

“I have to go to a party” Whined Michelle, it was mostly true. If Valarie ever found out that she was obsessing over a boy, even in a strictly asexual, clinical way, she would never let her hear the end of it.

“It’s about time! You need to go to a party, I’m so tired of being someone as smart and pretty as you spending all her time in a dump like this.” Valerie reasoned, gesturing to a drunk man who was trying to pick a fight with the copy machine.

“This place is great,” Said Michelle ignoring the public drunkard making a scene only taking in the tall stacks of books around her.

“It is not.” Valerie reiterated unamused. “This afternoon, someone spat on me. Today is what I consider a good day. This place is the worst. You need to get out and enjoy yourself, make friends your own age. Trust me! Your only going to be young once.”

“I’m going! I’m going!” Michelle assured her, she knew better than to get Valarie started on a rant. “But I’m only going because of there's a rumor that the Spider-Man is going to be there.”

Michelle could never understand why some people made it so easy for others to push their buttons.

“If that spandex-wearing freak shows up, you get out of there Michelle! I mean it! I don’t like that one. I don’t trust him and I don’t want you ending up as collateral damage in some super-powered grudge match.”

“Relax Valerie!” Said Michelle putting her hands up in surrender. “It’s just a rumor, no one really thinks he's going to show up.”

“Good,” Valerie sighed looking visibly relieved.

Michelle left the library an hour before closing that day under protest. Valarie had insisted that she go home and get ready. She probably assumed Michelle considered getting ready to consist of more than dropping off books at her apartment.

Her mom was already home when Michelle walked in. Her new husband, Michelle’s step-father Frank, had been working double shifts for the past month while her mom tried to find a new job. She worked as a waitress, although these days she was convinced that she was cursed. The last three places she served at had all closed in less than a year.

Michelle liked spending time with her mother. They didn’t have much in common and never had, but she was one of the only people in the whole world that Michelle knew that she could be herself around. She always felt like she was performing in a weird way for everyone else, but she didn’t have to when it was just the two of them. She could just be.

“What do you want to get for dinner? Indian? Thai?” Her mother asked.

“I’m not staying for dinner.” Said Michelle “Liz, from Academic Decathlon, is having a party and we’re all going super early because we’re dorks that don’t understand how parties work.”

“You're a dork that doesn't understand how parties work!” her mother laughed, “My babies first high school party!” she went on, gushing.

“It is not my first high school party.” Michelle protested.

“It is. I’m your mother I would know.” She said grinning. “what are you going to wear?”

If Michelle hadn't been regretting her decision to go to Liz’s all day she certainly did now.

“This?” Michelle suggested, gesturing to her black tee shirt and jeans that were sagging from extensive wear.

Her mother looked horrified.

“You have to dress up a little, wear some color for once. It would do wonders for your complexion.” She noted pushing Michelle’s hair out of her face.

What was so wrong with black? It matched everything, you could never tell if your clothes were dirty or not. She couldn't understand why anyone wore any other color.

“Really honey, with just the tiniest effort you could knock all those high school boys on their asses.”

Michelle knew her mother meant it as a compliment. She was trying to connect, but Michelle could only roll her eyes.

Her mother missed her perfect doll daughter and now had to make do with the other one. Only her mother had never bothered to learn what kind of person Michelle was. She didn’t want to be a pretty girl. She didn’t want to leave boys wordless by looking hot, she wanted to blow them away with her wit. She wasn't like her mother or sister, she didn’t need a man in her life to play the broken-hearted damsel sitting next to the phone. She didn’t want to be that girl.

“If you didn’t have my eyes and come out of my body I would swear you no child of mine,” Her mother grimaced as she went darting into her bedroom. She came back with a pink frilly monstrosity of a dress in her arms. “This should fit you! You would look so pretty in pink!”

It had been her sisters. Her mother had spent a fortune on all of her pageant dresses and couldn't bear to part with them. Michelle thought they must have reminded her of the good-old-days when she and her beautiful daughter were the envy of every high society New York debutante.

“I am not wearing that.” Michelle implored.

“You are!” her mother insisted. She was giving Michelle a look that Michelle knew she meant business. Her mother was the only person that she couldn't seem to intimidate. Probably because she learned everything she knew her. “you're wearing it or I’m not letting you go.”

Michelle couldn’t begin to express how much she wanted to not wear that dress and not go to the party. Unfortunately, it wasn't an option.

“That's not fair! I have to go, the team made a big scene about it!” Michelle knew she wasn’t going to win this fight, but she couldn't give in too easily. If she did her mother would use it as an opportunity to railroad her into wearing lipstick or heels.

“Life isn’t fair.” reminded her mother, shoving the dress into Michelle’s arms.

She let out a long groan and slowly staggered to her bedroom in a futile protest. She called it a bedroom, but it was just a bed with walls on three sides and a closet. She never had to worry about cleaning up the floor because she hardly had any floor to clean.

She slipped on the pick ruffled strapless horror show that was sure to be the end of her. It was tacky in the sort of hipster way that people were calling trendy, even if it was still just tacky. She zipped up the side of the dress, silently furious that her mother had been right about the size. She took a breath and turned to see how she looked in the mirror.

The transformation was jarring, she hadn't painted her face and her hair was still an unkempt mess with a mind of its own, but she still somehow looked like a whole new person. She was standing differently, looking delicate and fragile in a way that she hardly recognized and made her instantly uncomfortable.

Michelle could not wear this to a party. No one would ever let her forget it. She wasn’t going to invite that kind of ridicule. Who cared that the way that the dress hugged her back making her feel beautiful in a way that she had never considered before. She wasn't the kind of girl that wanted to look pretty. Everyone knew that about her.

She had made a deal with her mother though. She considered changing in a McDonald's bathroom before she met up with the rest of the team at school, but her mom would see that coming. She would probably ask for Liz to send her a selfie wearing the dress at 10 pm holding a piece of mail addressed to Liz’s dad or something equally ridiculous and specific.

She would have to find a way to make the dress suit her style. She considered it as an artistic statement. If the dress represented the traditional gender norms what could she do to upend that patriarchal structure?

She tried a few options before she settled on just wearing the dress over the clothes she had worn to school that day. It was not nearly the kind of powerful political statement that she might have been able to come up with if she had more time. But it did make her look weird. Like an alien who was trying to disguise themselves to study human behavior.

It was perfect.

Frank had come home while she was changing. He and her mother had opened what would probably be the first of many bottles of wine. Her mother did not seem amused by Michelle’s talent for finding loopholes She would be one day when Michelle became some powerhouse attorney making a fortune out of finding loopholes.

“You look ridiculous.” Frank observed. Always a critic.

“Thank you” Michelle replied quickly grabbing her bag off the floor and making a beeline for the door before her mother found a way to steamroll her into changing.

“I’ll be back by curfew!” She called to them, shutting the door before either of them had a chance to realize that they had never set a curfew.

She found a seat on the train and watched people coming and going as she made her way back to school. There were a couple of tourists that were staring at her. She knew they were tourists for exactly that reason. You wouldn't get any attention as a run of the mill weirdo riding a New York City subway train from anyone who actually lived in the city. You had to ascend to a whole other level of insanity to even scratch the surface of a New Yorkers steely reserve.

Cindy was already waiting in the parking lot when Michelle got there. She seemed surprised Michelle had actually shown up, and early no less.

Cindy was right about her, Liz’s party was currently at the top of her list of places she didn’t want to be. Michelle hated people thinking that they had her figured out. Then things would start getting familiar and chummy. Eventually, someone might actually think they were friends and nobody wanted that.

Abraham showed up after a little while, which took the pressure off of Cindy to try and have a normal conversation with Michelle. Finally, Sally pulled up at 7 pm on the dot and they all piled into her old Audi.

Michelle was sitting in the passenger in front, anything to avoid getting stuck between Abe and Cindy when they got all misty-eyed.

Sally mentioned that she liked Michelle's dress as she was fastening her seatbelt. Sally was probably the last truly honest person Michelle knew. She would never just say something like that to be nice. Sally clearly had awful taste.

“Thanks,” said Michelle quietly. She wasn't sure what else to say. What did girls say to other girls when they complimented their clothes? 

Thankfully Michelle wouldn't have to figure that out tonight.

“Do you think the Spider-Man will really show up?” Sally asked them as she headed towards the expressway. “I wasn’t there but Flash was saying that Peter was bragging about being one of his closest friends”

“It wasn't like that,” Michelle corrected.

“You were there? What did he say?” Cindy asked excitedly.

“Just that he had met him through his stupid Stark Internship. Honestly, Ned was talking it up a whole lot more than Peter” She explained. She had no idea what she was defending Peter Parker for.

“Wow,” breathed Abe, “So Peter really knows the Spider-Man?” he asked sounding star struck.

Michelle nodded.

“He better be working with the Spider-Man, if he wasn't doing something awesome like that I swear I would straight up murder him for ditching us right before nationals.” Cindy broke in. “I mean it, I would kill him dead.”

Michelle didn’t doubt her.

They were the first ones to arrive at Liz’s house because they obviously would be. Liz’s dad hadn't even left by the time they got there.

“You kids have fun! Not too much fun though!” He grinned at them as he walked out the door looking like every classic cut-out dad character on a TV sitcom.

Michelle and the others moved from standing in awkward silence in the foyer to sitting in awkward silence in the living room. Michelle clearly wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been invited to many parties.

She had never seen them so happy to see Flash in the whole of the time she had known them when he arrived after 20 minutes of awkward silence. Abraham even helped him set up his gear. Michelle wouldn't have believed it if she hadn’t witnessed it herself.

Thankfully other kids began flooding in after Flash so no one felt obligated to pretend to be his friend for very long.

There were a lot more people than she had been expecting, and clearly, a lot more than Liz was been expecting. She seemed to be enjoying herself less with every new arrival. It was obvious why everyone was there.

“Do you really think he’s going to show up?” She heard them whispering.

“Nah,” Most of them said. “No way.”

And yet in spite of that unquestioning disbelief, it also seemed to be the only thing they had come for.

“Do you think Spider-Man left already?”

“No way! He’d definitely make an entrance”

“I’m sure he has better things to do”

“Can you imagine being the kid who said they could get Spider-Man to come and then didn’t, I don’t know if I could even show my face in public again!”

“Peter Palmer? Who's that?”

“No Peter Parker, he’s that short, white, sophomore kid.”

“That could literally be anyone”

“Do you think he’ll bring that Falcon guy?”

“No way man, he’s a war criminal like Captain America, do you even watch the news?

There was nowhere she could turn where people weren't all speculating wildly about whether or not Spider-Man would show up to this basic party with a bunch of underage nerds.

Wasn't Midtown supposed to be for smart kids?

Michelle was starving. She had left home without eating and all Liz had out were bags of chips. She decided to dig around the kitchen to find something more substantial like a banana or some cheese. She found a loaf of gorgeous whole-wheat bread that Michelle quickly took a slice of and popped into the toaster, watching it hungrily.  
  
At last, it jumped out of its warm prison and she readily grabbed it and opened up the fridge to grab a container of margarine. She turned around just as Peter and Ned entered. She told herself that it would have been impossible to miss Ned’s hat and that she hadn’t been watching the door all night waiting for them to walk in, and yet she found herself drifting towards them.

“I can’t believe you guys are at this lame party.” She realized as the words fell out of her mouth that it was the first time she had talked to anyone since she arrived. She must have found them talking about something embarrassing. Peter was making the cute, stupid face that he would always make whenever she caught him off guard.

“You're here too,” Ned pointed out. She considered him, she was clearly at the party, but she wouldn’t consider herself of the party.

“Am I?” She asked Ned, leaving him and Peter to either consider the existential states of being or to just be too weirded out to follow her while she found a dark corner to quietly panic.

The thought had come and gone through her mind so quickly she had hoped if she ignored it the whole thing would dissipate as quickly as it had come. Instead, it echoed in her head a thousand times over.

She thought Peter Parker’s face was cute.

Since when?

Michelle had been successfully suppressing the creeping feelings that she seemed to be developing towards Peter for months. She had convinced herself that it was just because he had been acting weird, that he was a puzzle that she was trying to solve. Any idiot could have seen clear as day that she had a crush on him.

It was so simple.

For it to just pop into her head like that, out of nowhere. One second she is just regular Michelle, too cool for this party and everyone at it, now she was hiding in a corner watching Peter talking with Liz out of the corner of her eye. She felt like was losing her mind. She had an impulse to understand and analyze as a way to try and maintain order, but this seemed to be without any proper reason. It just came out of the fog, there was no avoiding her feelings anymore.

It was unbearable. How could she let this happen?

Peter was definitely odd he wasn't eccentric. He was just nice and smart, there wasn't anything remotely remarkable about him. Just the remarkable fact that Michelle liked him, and she never liked anyone.

None of it mattered, Michelle was telling herself. Peter was the kind of guy that gets googley eyes for the kind of girls that wore headbands and giggled girls like Liz that he was looking at at this very moment with his big, dopey, googley eyes.

She needed to stop staring at Peter Parker, it was making it difficult for her to breathe properly. She made her way along the wall of windows until she found a door out to the pool. Outside she could finally hear herself think, far away from the obnoxious pulsing house music Flash had been playing for what felt like days.

She could still feel something invisible weighing down on her chest and wondered if this was what a panic attack felt like. Absentmindedly she scanned the sea of faces for Cindy to see if she might be able to help her.

She found her sitting and Abe with their feet dangling in the pool taking turns staring at each other or quietly flirting. Whenever Michelle had seen them like this in the past she wondered why they wouldn't just get it over.

Tonight was different, it was like she had been wearing sunglasses her whole life and she was just now learning that the sky wasn’t actually pink. She watched Abe and Cindy in their quiet bubble of affection and wondered if that was what she wanted.

Relationships had never appealed to her before, why should they now? Just because she had a small crush on Peter didn’t have to mean anything at all. She didn’t want him to suddenly look at her with stars in her eyes and sweep her off her feet like some two-dimensional romantic lead. He was obviously head over heels for Liz and Michelle wasn't interested in caring about anyone.

Suddenly Michelle felt her stomach drop. She was the Fanny Price of her own life. She was the prickly social outcast that had fallen in love with a boy who could never love her back.

Love was, admittedly, much stronger language than Michelle was comfortable with.

She couldn't believe that she had somehow become a Fanny Price. A talentless failure who kills herself before she ever got a real chance at living. Michelle wasn't supposed to be that girl. She was the protagonist, the smartest person in the room. She was Hamlet and Elizabeth Bennet and Sherlock Holmes all rolled in one. The idea of pinning for a boy was so foreign to her she couldn't even process it.

She must have lost track of how long she was sitting next to the pool trying to figure out how to escape her Fanny- fate when she noticed Liz was heading her way.

“Hey, have you seen Peter?” Liz asked.

“Nope,” Michelle admitted, hoping that she sounded like the cool indifferent loner that everyone thought she was and not a sad lovestruck teen trope that she had just realized she really was.

Michelle assumed Liz was wondering when Spider-Man would cannonball into her pool. She had the whole school here, it was probably embarrassing that he hadn’t shown up. It dawned on her then that in all her efforts to avoid Peter that night she hadn’t actually seen him at all since he arrived. She had been staying clear of Ned’s big hat just to ere on the side of caution.

“I’m a little worried about him,”  Liz explained. “I never really thought he could actually get the Spider-Man to come to my dumb party, but you know how Peter is. He tries to play it cool but he just wants to fit in.”

Michelle was trying to play it cool herself, but inside she was ripping herself apart. Of course, Liz didn’t think that Peter could get an elusive masked vigilante to come to a party with a bunch of high school nerds. She was a good person, of course, she would worry about how Peter’s public embarrassment would hurt him and not her.

Michelle began to wonder if she had let feelings for Peter had been clouding her judgment of Liz. She always wanted to believe that Liz’s intentions were shallow and selfish, even though Liz had never been anything but kind to her.

Michelle didn’t know what to say. She had let her feelings for a boy, a boy that she didn’t even realize she had feelings for, transform her into some jealous girl that saw other women as completion.

For the third time that day Michelle felt as though she didn’t recognize herself.

Thankfully Betty Brant had come along and grabbed Liz saying something about a bathroom situation saving Michelle from the haze of disgust, envy she had found herself swallowed by.

She began desperately looking to find Sally to let her know she was leaving. She would get a cab to pick her up, she just couldn't just stand here like an idiot girl in an 80’s movie. She couldn't stand to be at that house any longer. Se eventually resolved to just send Sally a text message and wait for her cab out in front. She needed to get her mind sorted. She wasn't cut out to be some smitten teenager getting ignored at a party.

Flash had managed to get the crowd inside to shout ‘Penis Parker’, she could hear them clearly from the end of the Toome’s long walkway. It was was in no way helping her situation, she wanted nothing more than to never think about Peter Parker ever again.

She sat on the curb feeling even more ridiculous in her sister’s silly pink dress then she had all night. She looked up into the night sky and frowned, no stars out here either, still too close to the city. She tried to clear her mind but all she could think of was Peter. She heard his voice playing over in her mind and she thought of the stupid face he would make whenever she was messing with him.

She imagined he probably smelled nice, like clean laundry or bread baking. Something that was so boring and ordinary you wouldn’t even think about how comforting it is until you smelled it.

She wanted to shake him out of her mind but she knew now it was hopeless, in no little part because the man himself had just slumped down next to her.

“Great party” she heard Peter say quietly. The crowd was still chanting ‘Penis Parker’ inside.

She wanted to say something snarky. She wanted to ask where he had been all night. She wanted to ask him about the Spider-Man as well as a thousand other questions that had been knocking around her head for months but every word she tried to say seemed to dissolve on her tongue. All she could do was stare at her shoes and nod.

“The best.” She carefully replied. 

They sat like that for a while longer until her car arrived. She didn’t goodnight or even wave goodbye. All she could think about as she climbed into the backseat was that Peter Parker smelled like garbage.


	3. You Best Protect Ya Neck

Michelle had never been given a problem that couldn't solve. She had never gotten into an argument she couldn't win. She had never failed a test or started a project she couldn't finish. She worked hard and stayed focused.

She had seen and survived the worst of times and was still standing.

Michelle would shut this Peter Parker problem down.

A piece of cake.

According to her research, there were two principal factors that lead to attraction, Situational and Individual.

Individual factors were things like similar personal qualities or interests, and physical attraction. Michelle wasn’t blind, she could see that Peter was a good looking kid. He was appealing in such a boring and basic way that Michelle hardly considered it a real factor.

Overall she didn’t think that research on Individual factors of attraction would be much help to her. Situational factors such as proximity, familiarity, and anxiety seemed to be a much better fit for her predicament.

Proximity was obvious, Michelle and Peter had been together in every single advanced placement course since they started at Midtown. He lived in her neighborhood and had been a frequent figure in her childhood after she moved to Queens because of their aunt's friendship.

Familiarity was what Robert Zajonc called the ‘Mere Exposure’ effect, it postulates that we develop an attraction towards people because of repeated exposures to them. That explanation seemed pretty logical to Michelle, it seemed a good fit for her condition.

Anxiety was the last factor. Research shows that people with high anxiety prefer being alone as opposed to people who don’t and instead enjoy being around others. Teenagers are predisposed to find themselves attracted to people who are familiar and within close proximity because they already experienced a lower level of stress around them. Michelle wouldn’t have considered her situation to be stressful, at least not before today, but in light of the other evidence, she was willing to consider it a possibility.

If the problem began with proximity and familiarity the answer was simple enough. Avoid Peter Parker at all costs.

Michelle had experience with this technique. It was the simplest answer and the simplest answer is usually correct. Implementing it would prove a much more challenging obstacle than she had initially anticipated.

She had a lot of classes with Peter. They were together practically the whole day. Michelle had already known that, how could she not? She had fixated on Peter for months like a stalker.

Michelle had no more pretenses about her feelings or actions. Peter wasn’t hiding anything. She had weaved an elaborate web of intrigue around to avoid accepting that she had a crush on a boy for the first time in her life and had no idea how to handle herself.

It had been easier to disable her emotional triggers when it was her Dad and Gayle. One night her dad had tucked her into bed, the next morning she woke up in the back of her mom’s car. She wouldn't see her father again for eight months. Her sister had been gone just as fast. They were both clean breaks that healed quickly and properly.

How on earth was she supposed to exterminate the butterflies that erupted in her chest whenever she saw Peter if he and those awful butterflies were always around?

Suddenly it felt like he was everywhere she turned. She was hyper aware of his presence at all times. Avoiding him clearly wasn't going to be an option.

Distance was.

The Academic Decathlon team was leaving for DC in the morning, putting a few hundred miles between herself and Peter for a whole weekend.

It was practically Kismet.

She was still stuck in school today. By the end of homeroom it was evident proximity would remain a problem she knew she needed a new plan. Michelle spent her time in studio art drafting out some simple guidelines that would hopefully get her through the rest day with her sanity intact.

Avoid Peter whenever it was possible.

Do not engage with Peter when 1. is not possible.

Be mean to Peter If 1. & 2\. are not possible. If he wanted distance from her that still met her objective.

By lunch and Michelle was already exhausted.

She had spent the whole day consciously avoiding Peter while not overtly avoiding him to avoid suspicion while also maintaining a cold and calculating exterior she had spent years cultivating. Just in case that wasn't enough for her she also had a civics test that afternoon that she had completely forgotten about.

The stress was unbearable and she was beginning to unravel.

Her mother, always mindful of Michelle’s schedule, had sent her a message asking her to pick up her lucky jacket from the dry cleaners that afternoon before they closed. Michelle would be at school while the team drilled for hours tonight. It just wasn't possible and if her mother had ever paid the smallest bit of attention to any of the notes that Michelle left for her on the fridge the situation might have been avoided.

Naturally, her mother didn’t see it that way. At first, she just told Michelle to ditch practice, she had never understood the decathlon team anyway. When Michelle told her she wouldn't do that she received a long ranting text message in reply. At first glance, Michelle knew it would be bad news.

No good ever came from a long text message.

Her mother was going off about responsibilities and everything she had given up for her daughters. The word ‘Thankless’ was peppered throughout as well as some vague threats.

Michelle skimmed it over knowing if she read every word it would just make her blood boil and she was already in a pretty foul mood.

The only thing that seemed to be remotely working in Michelle's favor was Peter’s behavior. He had been doing his best to avoid everyone after the whole school heard that his ‘buddy’ Spider-Man being a no-show the night before.

Unfortunately for Michelle that also meant that everyone at school, including the kids who hadn't even been at the party, were now calling him Penis Parker. the nickname had become a miserable school-wide joke that had quickly spun out of control while forgetting to actually be funny. It was everywhere as if teenage boys needed another excuse to make dick jokes.

Peter seemed to be handling it alright. Michelle had allowed herself a few chance glances at him around the end of the day convincing herself it was more of a wellness check on a student who was being bullied all day. But Peter seemed fine, maybe a bit irritated, but seemed to let everything just roll off of him.

It felt so weird and right to see Peter unbothered by becoming the laughingstock of the school  
and Michelle hated how it made her heart beat against her chest.

When she finally made it to Civics she didn’t even care that she was probably going to fail a test for the first time in her life. It didn’t even seem to matter anymore. She just wanted to get it over with so she would have only less thing to agonize over.

Cindy clearly had figured out Michelle was unprepared. She was extra prickly today and kept shooting nasty glances over her shoulder towards Michelle like she was trying to cheat off her paper which made Michelle more upset every time it happened.

She was defiantly unprepared for this exam, she could have learned the information and she didn’t and that made her a failure.

She wasn’t a cheat. She would rather fail this test than cheat to pass it. The idea that Cindy Moon thought she was smart enough for Michelle to rely on for the correct answers was absurd and Michelle didn’t have any patience for it. She rushed through the questions, ready to \take whatever damage it would do to her GPA and got out as fast as she could.

There was a text message on her phone waiting for her when she checked it after class. Bracing herself for another rant from her mother she was relieved to see it was from Mrs. Gonzales.

‘Can U BBSit after 4?’ it read.

She wished that she could just sit with Noah for a few hours and let his simple, baby world white out her miserable teenage one, but she had Decathlon practice after school. She doubted that Liz was going to let them off easy right before nationals. Besides, for the first time ever Michelle found that she was looking forward to practice. A room filled with overexcited nerds shouting factoids at each other sounded like just the perfect amount of chaos for her to get her head straight.

She could see Ned talking to Liz about something when she walked into the library where they were scheduled to practice that afternoon. It sounded like Ned was making up an excuse. His voice always would go high pitched and whiny when he was lying or making excuses. Cindy looked livid, which was also a pretty strong clue.

“-you're going to be quizzing us on the bus the whole way to D.C. tomorrow anyway.” Ned was saying.

“Whats going on?” Asked Michelle in her best deadpan voice because she absolutely did not care about anyone, specifically not Peter Parker or Peter Parker’s best friend who was a terrible liar.

“Ned’s trying to sabotage us.” snapped Cindy.

“What? No! I was just asking Liz if we could take this practice off, you know, rest up for nationals.” Ned sputtered, his voice slightly rising in pitch.

“Where are you going?” Asked Cindy. Michelle was curious too, Ditching the team was Peter’s move, not Ned’s, then Cindy started to go a bit off the rails, “Are you going to go meet with whoever it is that got to you? Was it those stuck-up jerks from High Technology High School?”

“Chill out Cindy, I just have to go help Peter with a science project.” Said Ned. Of course, it had something to do with Peter.

“What project?” Michelle asked.

“Is Peter in on this too?” asked Cindy.

“It’s just something for chemistry,” Ned explained.

“I’m in your chemistry class. We don’t have any project.” reminded Michelle.

She thought Ned might have a real-life heart attack in front of her then and there. She sort of hoped he would, killing someone with a single look would really make her pop on college applications.

“It’s for extra credit!” Ned squeaked.

“However you losers want to spend your Friday night is none of my business.” Michelle shrugged, digging a book out of her bag. Meanwhile, Cindy continued to drill Ned with more and more outrageous accusations.

Michelle told herself she didn’t care what Ned and Peter were up to. She told herself she didn’t care about Peter Parker at all. It was a lot harder to take herself seriously now that she knew she was lying to herself.

“Relax!” Liz shouted trying to reign in Cindy, “Ned, I was going to give you guys the night off anyway.”

“What?!?” Michelle and Cindy yelled together, everyone seemed surprised that Cindy hadn't been alone and had turned their attention to Michelle.

“Why do you care? You weren’t going to practice with us anyway,” asked Cindy coldly.

“I don’t,” She said in the most nonchalant tone she could muster “I just would have made plans if I had known.” Michelle lied.

“You would not.” Cindy spat back.

“Anyway..” Ned slowly backing away towards the door. “Thanks, Liz, I guess I will see you tomorrow.”

“8 am sharp!” Liz called as the door swung behind him.

“Should I follow him? Let you guys know if he gets on a train to Jersey?” Cindy asked Liz, still visibly paranoid.

“No, Cindy, just go home and rest, or don’t, whatever you do just do it alone and away from Ned.” Said Liz before pulling Michelle aside while the rest of the team packed up.

“Is everything alright?” Liz asked her.

Everything was a dumpster fire wrapped in a used diaper falling apart at the seams, but she didn’t think Liz wanted to hear about that.

“Fine,” Michelle lied, but that was obvious from her tone.

What had happened to her? Was she broken?

“I’m going over to Betty’s if you want to hang out,” Liz was saying “I’m staying the night at her place so my mom doesn’t have to drive me into the city tomorrow. We were just going to study, I’m sure Betty wouldn't mind.”

Michelle was certain that Betty would mind a great deal.

She didn’t know what this weird social charity that Liz was trying to offer her, but hanging out with a bunch of girls all night and having pillow fights over who was the dreamiest Avenger was not Michelle’s idea of a good night.

“Like I was saying, I have better places to be on a Friday night.” Said Michelle before swinging her backpack back over her shoulder and walking out the door.

Michelle didn’t know what Liz presumed to know about her life but it was probably sad and tragic. People were always looking at each other and assuming the worst and then gossiping about it. It was made people feel less shitty about their own lives.

Mr. Harrington was heading down the hall towards her while she was stomping out.

“Hey, Michelle! Where are you in such a hurry to get?” He asked.

“Liz said we were taking the night off.” She explained avoiding his question. She didn’t have anywhere to hurry off too. Except maybe the apartment down the hall from hers to feed applesauce to an infant.

“I know, I’m glad I caught you though.” He said stopping in front of her. “I know you haven't been the most enthusiastic member of the team, and I just wanted to know if you had put any thought into whether or not you want to continue on with us next year? We're going have to make some changes now that Peter’s gone and Liz is graduating.”

Michelle just stared at him and tried to understand what he was asking her. Was he trying to kick her off the team? Make room for new players that actually want to work as a team instead of sulk into corner mooning over Peter Parker. She knew that she wasn't really a team player, but she was still twice as smart as anyone else that he had.

“No pressure!” Mr. Harrington insisted “I just wanted to know what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t know,” Michelle told him honestly. She didn’t want to be on a team that didn't want her.

“Alrighty, just let me know,” Mr. Harrington said with a smile before he started heading back down the hall. “See you in the morning!”

Walking out onto the street was like breathing fresh air again. The air was far from fresh, it stunk of rotting food and smog but Michelle felt like she had been set free. She knew she should probably let Mrs. Gonzales know that she was available to babysit for them now, but she wasn't ready to let go of this feeling just yet.

By that time tomorrow, she would be in Washington DC and her mind would be thousands of miles beyond Peter Parker. She would have a whole weekend without feeling her heart race and palms sweat whenever he walked into a room.

She decided to go to the library instead. She wanted to feel wrapped in that warmth of literature and solitude for a while and let all the stress of the past twenty-four hours just fade into the air.

Of course, when she got there a certain noisy librarian had other ideas.

“How was the party?” Valarie asked as soon as Michelle walked in.

Michelle had already forgotten almost everything from the party other than her humiliating breakdown. She didn’t want to think about that night ever again. She wished she had never even gone to the stupid party in the first place. If she hadn't she could have lived in denial for a little while longer.

“It sucked.” Michelle scoffed.

“It can’t have been all that bad, tell me everything!” Valarie pleaded.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Michelle snapped.

“Don’t you pull that tone with me, what happened?” Said Valerie.

“It’s none of your business!” Michelle countered. She was sick of Valarie always trying to pry information out of her that didn’t exist. Valarie wanted Michelle to tell her that the night had been some kind of fairy tale story that she would never forget for the rest of her life. Even if something like that had happened to her, Valarie wasn’t entitled to any of it.

“It was a bad party and I had a bad time. End of story.”

“Now young lady-“

“What? I don’t owe you anything, just because you don’t have a life doesn’t mean you get to leach off of mine!” Michelle shouted storming out before Valarie could say another word.

She had already been picked apart that day she wasn’t going to let some sad, old, spinster, busybody make her feel any worse. She could have tried being calm, talking it out, sharing her feelings and being honest.

Being mean was just so much easier.

She probably got that from her father.

Michelle always had taken after her father. She had his nose and his love of books and his facetious sense of humor. They were both stubborn and moody.

She hated her father, she hated what he had done to her mother and her sister. She would never be able to forgive him for any of it. And yet every one of her best qualities had come from him. She liked those qualities, those parts of herself. She embraced them, even though they were all also a part of the worst person she had ever known.

Michelle didn’t like to think about her father, he was a topic, like her sister, she just avoided. She filed them both away, out of reach of all the prodding questions that her various counselors had tried to discuss with her.

She was good at compartmentalizing. It was another thing that made the Peter Parker problem all the more infuriating. He was invading every corner of her mind like a fungus.

She wanted to go home and just sleep. She wanted today to be over, just wake up tomorrow and leave for D.C. without worrying about Peter or her mother. She was so close she could almost taste it in the air. But she couldn't yet, she needed to kill time. She had told the Gonzales’s that she was too busy to help them. If they spotted her she would be busted. She decided to camp out in a middle-eastern restaurant she came across for an hour or so. Michelle bought a falafel and sat down at the cleanest looking table she could find.

There was TV sitting in a hole in the wall across from her playing Channel One News.  
Michelle wouldn't have paid it any mind but she saw a photo of a familiar red blur on the screen.

The graphic under the pictures read ‘Spider-Man in the Suburbs?’, Michelle was just getting pulled into the story when they abruptly cut to a red-faced man with a very well-groomed mustache.

“What gives initialed pricks like Iron Man or Spider-Man or Hulk-Man the right to come into our neighborhoods and fight their battles out in the open where anyone could get hurt?” The red-faced man yelled into the camera, “I don’t remember electing the Bug-Boy as the Sheriff of Queens!”

“If you're just joining us, the masked vigilante known only as Spider-Man was spotted swinging through a small local neighborhood and causing a whole mess of damage.” said a pretty news anchor.

She was doing that thing news anchor’s did in when there was breaking news and they repeated the headline few minutes. This hardly seemed like breaking news to Michelle, since when had Spider-Man become a hot-button issue?

“I’m joined by J. Jonah Jameson, the editor in chief of DailyBugal.com"

Michelle was not even remotely surprised, Spider-Man had become the de facto villain of his website ever since Spidey first swung into Queens.

“None of these ‘enhanced individuals’ have any respect for the people that get in their way, Spider-Man isn’t going to be held responsible for his actions. Why should he get a free pass from the law just because he can shoot glue at people? At anything, I think that means that we should trust him less!” J. Jonah Jameson was bellowing into the camera, face getting redder and redder the longer as he went on.

She tried to tune him out. She knew that he was getting paid to drag Spider-Man on TV, but he had made a few strong points that Michelle couldn't shake off. Last night the Spider-Man had wrecked several private yards for no reason anyone could determine. She had never had a yard before, but if she ever did she would be pretty upset if some guy came crashing through her fence like the Kool-Aid guy and then she had to pay for the damages herself.

Wasn't this exactly the sort of thing those Sokovia Accords that everyone was freaking out about a few months ago we supposed to protect them from?  
Michelle wanted accountability but there was a lot of history to reconcile. If it hadn’t been for the Avengers her city wouldn't even be here, but there was a causality to their presence in the world. Now more of these powerful individuals were springing up everywhere. How her generation chose to deal with the issues of enhanced individuals would probably define the planet for the next hundred years of human civilization.

She wanted to believe that the Spider-Man was a good person and was using his powers modestly and widely, but every day she found more evidence to the contrary.

Michelle waited until the sun had set before she walked home, she was thinking about what has happened with Valarie and with Liz and was feeling rotten and ugly. She didn’t think she could despise herself anymore until she stepped out of the stairwell and saw Vin Gonzalez playing with Noah in the hallway and she was hit with a tidal wave of guilt.

The Gonzalez’s were kind people who had always opened their doors to Michelle when she needed them. They both worked round the clock to try and keep their heads above water and Michelle had just blown them off because she needed some time to feel sorry for herself. She was a rotten, selfish, petty monster.

No wonder she didn’t have any friends.

Mr. Gonzalez waved to her. She didn’t want to talk to him, or to anyone. She wanted all the particles in her body to separate at that exact moment and just vanish into nothing but that wasn’t an option so she tried to wipe the shame off her face and walked down the hall to meet them.

“MmCHaa!” Noah shouted when she got closer.

“He loves you.” Mr. Gonzalez beamed. Michelle tried to hid how ashamed she felt. Mr. Gonzalez had probably had to skip a shift at work to stay home with Noah. He was a cop. What if she had let a criminal go just so she could hide in a dirty shawarma shop?

Michelle tried to hide how ashamed she was feeling. Mr. Gonzalez had probably had to skip a shift at work to stay home with Noah. He was a cop. What if she had let a criminal go just so she could hide in a dirty shawarma shop?

“I’m sorry I couldn’t look after him today.” She apologized not looking up for Noah’s sandy head.

“Don’t be, we rely on you way too much.” Mr. Gonzales insisted, “We should have figured this out by now, it’s just harder than we expected.”

Somehow this only made Michelle feel worse. Mr. Gonzales thought they needed to flip their lives around for her while she was out by herself doing nothing.

She needed to think about anything other than herself so she asked Mr. Gonzalez how his work was going. He typically had some good stories to share.

Vin Gonzales was a beat cop, probably the only cop that Michelle trusted. It was strange that she could thought she could trust a freak in a mask more than the NYPD. Truthfully it was probably her distrust in the NYPD that primed her to believe in someone outside the law, like Spider-Man.

“He seems to like the attention,” He said of Spider-Man, Mr. Gonzalez had been tasked with cleaning up his glue-trap webs all over the borough, "as far as I can tell he seems to get it wrong as often as he gets it right. You see that kinda shoot-first ask questions later attitude coming out of the academy these days too, it’s no way to get people to trust you.”

“The Spider-Man doesn’t shoot guns though, he shoots webs,” Michelle suggested.

Mr. Gonzales smiled at her, “Your right, this one’s probably harmless, but the next one might not be.” he sighed “I guess I just wish all those heroes would just let me do my job.”

What he was saying made sense. Michelle may not want to hear it, but it was still true.

“Good luck at your Quiz-Bowl thing this weekend!” Mr. Gonzales added, Scooping up Noah back into his arms.

“Academic Decathlon.” corrected Michelle.

“That thing! Good luck at that!.” He said before hiking up his voice in that weird way people always did when they were talking to babies. “Say good luck to Michelle Noah”

“MmGey!” Noah squealed.

“Ok well, bye-bye MJ!” Mr. Gonzales chuckled as he opened the door to their apartment. Noah shouting ‘MJ!’ in his arms.

“MJ! MJ! MJ!” He was screaming happily as the door softly clicked shut. Michelle slowly walked back down the hall to her door each step felt loaded with the weight of an intense dislike she had for herself.

The apartment reeked of wine and whiskey when Michelle walked in. Frank was already passed out in bed but her mother was still up watching the news. She looked up at Michelle when she came in with glazed over eyes and beckoned her to come over. She smelled of booze and sweat.

“Anna is going to be on TV!” She hiccuped. Michelle had forgotten about her Aunt’s big protest at Avengers Tower that afternoon. It must have gone well if it had made the evening news. She started to gather up empty bags and wrappers from the coffee table while they waited for the broadcast to move on from the latest reports from the DODC.

“The controversial sale of the Avengers Tower by Tony Stark to a private buyer is promising to bring jobs and new enterprise to the city, but not everyone is happy about the shadowy nature of the Iron-Mans dealings.

“This is it!” Her mother squeezed her arm in excitement.

Sure enough, they cut to a shot of her Aunt with a bullhorn standing in front of an impressive looking crowd. Her hair was elegantly wrapped and she was looking like the very image of resistance. Michelle just hoped they wouldn’t let her talk on camera.

Aunt Anna would have been a really cool lady if she could dial every aspect of her personality down just a bit.

Sure enough, the footage cut from the B-Roll of the protest to a close up of her Aunt speaking straight down the lens and directly into countless homes in New York City and the greater boroughs.

“We’re here because we want to know the truth that Tony Stark and the Government don’t want us to know! Because the truth is that we have been lied to! We were sold a bill of goods by the Sokovia Accords and we the people need to know what they are hiding from us!”

If anyone watching had thought she just seemed a just like a kooky little granola pusher at first probably thought she was full-on nuts after that last bit. It was a shame she always had to be the spokesperson for her causes, her only talents seemed to be looking good and discrediting her movements.

After the segment ended the television cut to a taped piece about the Sokovian Refugees crisis when Michelle mother turned and looked at her oddly.

“Did you stop at the dry cleaners?” She asked.

“No,” Michelle replied carefully, “I told you I wouldn't make it.”

“Goddammit!” She shouted “I have an interview in the morning! The first I’ve had in months and now you’ve gone and blown it for me before I even had a chance!”

“How is this my fault?” Michelle fired back. Right now it wasn't possible for her mother to make her feel any worse about herself than she already did.

“It's my lucky jacket!” she cried like that was some sort of excuse for howling at her daughter.

Just then her mothers phone began ringing, she picked it up and looked at it before throwing it into Michelle’s hands.

“You answer it.” She said bitterly. It was her Aunt.

“Michelle! Hi! Did you see! We were on TV!” Aunt Anna was yelling through the speaker sounding jubilant.

“I saw,”

“A bunch of people on Twitter are fired up about what I said, they're trying to call me crazy. They're the crazy ones if they can just ignore whats happening in this city!” said Anna, a line she had undoubtedly been repeating to pedestrians all day.

“Is your mom there? Did she see?” She asked.

“She’s here, she saw…” Michelle answered gently. Her mother was nodding off on the couch now, uninterested by the special report on Solvakian Refugees.

“What else?” Anna asked.

Michelle didn’t have to say anything, aunt Anna knew her sister all too well.

“She’s hammered again, isn't she? Probably not going to remember?”

“She was proud you were on TV,” Michelle assured he, she didn’t want her aunt freaking out about her well being again. She was so tired of everyone fighting over her. She was doing just fine on her own.

“She had no idea what I was talking about,” Anna chided,“Being sober wouldn't have made a difference.”

“It’s not like that, she just fell asleep in front of the TV,” Michelle lied,“she’s been out interviewing for jobs all week”

“You don’t have to lie to me.” Anna huffed.

“Did you ever get a comment from Stark? Or are you going to keep picketing until they come clean?” Changing the subject on a dime wasn't the best move to try on aunt Anna, but it was the only play Michelle could think of.

“That corporate monkey isn't going to tell us anything he doesn’t have to!” Slam dunk. “That's not even the point, the point is that we need to let him and the rest of those Avengers know that we have our eyes on them. We’re not just going to just follow them quietly into some kind of kratocracy, and they need to know it!” Ranted Anna as she found her stride.

“-and this classified sale of the Avengers Tower is just the latest power move by a guy who we’re supposed to think is incorruptibly good because he built his own private robot army. That sounds insane.

“That building has government quality labs and surveillance systems. Who could possibly need that kind of facility? How can we just trust this buyer? We don’t even know who they are! Corporations aren’t people, you can look in the eye and get a straight answer from them.”

“Well, legally -” Michelle cut in.

“Don’t you dare rain on my parade being clever right now! I made a difference today! I may not be changing the world but we are changing minds and that's just as important.” aunt Anna sighed, losing her momentum. “You’ll learn to appreciate these little wins when you get older when homecomings and cute boys aren’t the be all end all of your life and you have some perspective.”

“I have plenty of perspectives!” Snapped Michelle “I couldn’t care less about homecomings, and my life is bad enough without you condescending me.”

“Well get used to it sweetie. Life is hard.” Aunt Anna spat without missing a beat “It’s hard for you now, it’s hard for me now. It was hard for me when I was your age and it never got any easier. You just learn to handle each problem as it comes at you.

“You’re a smart and passionate young woman and you are wasting your anger on me and your mother. You should be out there fighting bigger battles, be angry at the whole fucking world. It’s the responsibility of strong smart people like us to stand up for what we know is important.”

Michelle knew she was right. That was the thing about aunt Anna, she was weird and had no filter at all but she was an infuriating way of being more honest with people than they could handle. thought possible. Michelle never had trouble understanding why her mother could hardly stand staying with her when she first left her dad.

“You’re right.” Michelle quietly admitted. Not apologizing, that would be the same as defeat.

“I’m always right, you kids think you know everything about everything. Someday you're going to figure out that there’s no shame in just asking for help every now and then instead of pushing everyone away”

Michelle knew she was right, but she wasn't going to say it again.

“You’re leaving for D.C. tomorrow right? The Academic Decathlon Final?” Asked Anna.

“Yeah, we leave in the morning,” Michelle answered.

“Well, there you go then!” Anna said excitedly “Take the fight to the Hill! Find a protest, get fired up! You’ll love it.”

“Maybe I will” Michelle mused. It sounded a lot better than being stuck with Cindy Moon and Flash Thompson all weekend.

Michelle thought about what Anna said for a long time after she hung up the phone. She thought about their protest and the Solvakian Refugees and all the questions that she had been seeing over the past few days. The world was changing and the government wasn't moving fast enough to properly regulate the collateral damage of these heroes.

The debate around the Avengers was always black and white, It never made any sense. Every one of the Avengers had their owned specialized set of abilities. How could one hastily drafted bill possibly have carefully considered contingencies for an immortal rage monster like the Hulk, a legion of self-propelled drones under Tony Stark’s personal control and Hawkeye, who was… also there.

No one had even heard of Spider-Man when they were writing the Accords. How could anyone possibly have a plan for him? Unless they had some sort of pre-cog working for them. And if they did then the American people deserved to know that too.

Did Spider-Man even sign the accords? If he didn’t then who was he answering too? If not the Avengers or the US government than who? he needed to be held accountable for his actions just like the everyone else in America. What gave him the right to bring trouble into her neighborhood?

The Accords were a reactionary piece of legislation that should have been ratified months ago. In their efforts to stay to the middle of the road, the United Nations came up with a gutless bill that apparently did nothing but adjust where the Avengers and Tony Stark got their funding from and quelled the public outrage that had boiled over after the explosion in Lagos.

We never see the Avengers doing anything political, Black Widow would show up to a congressional hearing and say something vague like ‘You Need Us’ or Tony Stark would drone on about his mission for ‘peace in our time’ like that somehow gave them licenses to punch their way out of their problems with no regard for the people on the ground.

If no one was really interested in understanding the moral ramifications of major world powers having their own arsenals of human super-weapons than the whole enterprise was doomed to fail.

Aunt Anna was right, there was no time like the present. Almost every country that signed the Accords had an embassy in D.C. It couldn't have been any more perfect if she had planned it. Michelle would change the world, get over Peter and help Midtown bring home a National Academic Decathlon championship.

She had a feeling that Washington was going to be the beginning of an exciting new chapter for her.

It was kismet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out I have a lot of opinions about the current political climate in the MCU


	4. A Justice League

There was no shortage of people who were upset about how little had been done to address the issues that a modern society with Enhanced Individuals faces. Washington DC had always been a hotspot for civic unrest, now was no exception.

Michelle had found a few small protests and rallies on Twitter. The German Embassy had the clearest and strongest message so Michelle was planning on stopping there first and feeling out the crowd. If she had the time she would hit another rally that seemed close by and had some impressive guest speakers.

At the rate they were currently going Michelle doubted they would get there in time for their first bracket the next morning.

They had been waiting while Mr. Harrington was being given a thorough safety check of their bus, he had been insistent on it.

Technically they weren’t running late, not yet. The whole team had gotten their early and Michelle couldn't understand why they were still waiting. She had anxiously powered through the first few chapters of _Invitation to a Beheading_ while she waited.

She was ready to escape. Get away from the city, her mother and most importantly. Peter Parker.

Suddenly Michelle felt a cold chill run down her spine.

“Hey it’s Peter,” She heard Abe say.

“Guys, yeah, I was hoping maybe I could rejoin the team?” She could hear Peter asking, she refused to look up, her heart had jumped into her throat making it hard to breathe

“Son of a bitch,” Michelle whispered. She was furious.

“No! No way you can’t just quit on us stroll up and be welcomed back by everyone.” Flash argued, sounding reasonable for the first time in his life.

“Hey! Welcome back Peter!” A beaming Mr. Harrington said as he hopped off the bus. “Flash, your back to first alternate.”

“What?” Flash yelled.

“He’s taking your place!” Abe burst out glowing.

Michelle looked up at Sally and Cindy’s glowing faces. Clearly she and Flash were the only ones unhappy with this turn of events. She could have fought it, but that would have just emboldened Flash and pissed off everyone else. This wasn’t going to be her fight today.

She might be surrounded by losers all weekend as well as the boy she couldn’t look at without blood rushing into her cheeks, but Michelle would be damned if that would stop her from exercising her civic right to assemble.

“Hey, excuse me, can we go already? Cause I was hoping to get in some light protesting in in front of one of the embassies before dinner, so…” Michelle asked expectantly.

“Protesting is patriotic.” Mr. Harrington agreed, “Let's get on the bus!”

Michelle hated Flash and hated agreeing with him more but this time he had been right. Peter shouldn’t be here. It wasn’t fair for him to keep jerking the team around like this and it wasn’t fair that her world flipped upside down just because he felt like showing up that day.

She could hear her aunt saying to her ‘Life isn't fair’ in her head as she sank down further into her seat groaning to herself.

She had to pull herself together. She was strong, she was smart, she could handle this weekend. She just needed to keep her head down and wits about her

“Hey, hows it going?” Peter asked dropping into the seat in front of her. Clearly, Michelle had clearly scorned a witch and was now doomed to suffer.

She didn’t want to talk to him, or look his stupid puppy face, or to be travel with him across various state lines. She didn’t want to be friendly. All she had wanted was to be far away from him.

For lack of any other options she just wordlessly extended her middle finger to him and went back to her reading.

 _Invitation to a Beheading_ was a variation on Nabokov's favorite theme, the idea of the citizen who fails to assimilate and the society that forces them to conform or exterminates them. It was a popular trope in sci-fi dystopias as well.

Cincinnatus who was spending his last few days before his execution in an absurdist jail. He was sentenced to die for the crime of ‘gnostical turpitude’, which as far as Michelle could tell was a sort of magic to levitate and perform other tricks that indicated a great disregard for matter.

He never hurt anyone, it was simply a social norm that he never understood.

The jailers and the warden play games with him. They eat his food, drop by his cell to joke with him, transform that cell into their offices. One jailer even waltzes with him down the halls of the prison. Cincinnatus never gives into their games which only confuses them. They can’t seem to understand why he would waste his time being so miserable just for the sake of his dignity. All he wants is to know when his death will be but no one will tell him.

The only character that seems to have any sympathy for Cincinnatus is the jail’s librarian. He supplies books that helped Cincinnatus escape the prison of his mind both literally and figuratively because of his abilities to bend matter. Eventually, he turns to writing which gives him hope as well as allowing him to retain his autonomy as an individual. Because of his disregard for matter, he is able to transform the prison into a maze of his own creation until his death.

It was bizarre, beautiful, tragic and utterly Kafkaesque. Michelle loved Kafka, she had read everything he had ever written at least twice including his uncompleted novels, diaries, and letters. She loved the effortless way he contrasted the surrealist images with his stark existential position on fate. His world was a dark and moody dream-state with the sardonic sense of humor that Michelle shared.

So far Invitation was alright. Still miles away from Kafka as far as Michelle was concerned, but mesmerizing all the same.

Michelle could imagine herself in Cincinnatus’s place. Her cell was a hollowed-out school bus surrounded by windows with a hard vinyl bus seat instead of a cot. Every so often Mr. Harrington would ask her to waltz around the bus with him, Flash would eat her food and Liz would come to visit, smoke cigarets and tell her crude jokes.

She saw Valerie in place of the jail librarian, giving her the tools to escape the torment of the guards and retain her sense of self. It hurt Michelle to think of how she left things with Valerie yesterday. She hadn’t deserved that.

“Michelle?” Liz called to her suddenly.

Michelle jumped out of her seat. She had been lost in the weird deep dark reaches of her imagination she had forgotten where she was. Slowly she looked around the bus and realized everyone was staring at her.

She quickly gathered herself and looked to Liz, “Whats up?” she asked.

“No one got this one, wanna give it a go?” said Liz waving a flash card in the air.

Michelle sighed shrugged, she was relieved it was something as simple as answering a question from a card. It was probably best to take a break from Cincinnatus anyway. Everyone on the team had freaked out when Peter left, it wouldn’t hurt to remind who these nerds who exactly she was.

Liz asked her what country was considered by the UN to be the worlds smallest superpower.

Michelle didn’t even have to think about it. She couldn't believe that she had to be called in for something so basic.

“Latveria” She answered dully.

“Correct!” Liz cheered as a chorus of bells rang out, which had become the teams custom.

Peter spun to face her with his hand raised up to high-five her, but Michelle just scowled at him until he meekly turned back around.

They didn’t need him here. Obviously, He was just tagging along so Liz wouldn't be disappointed with him anymore.

Quietly Michelle sank behind her book but its unusual spell had faded. She wouldn't be able to slip back into the phantasmagorical prison which was unfortunate. It had been much more comfortable than being stuck behind Peter Parker’s soft head of hair. The only question Cincinnatus ever had to worry about was when he was going to die.

She sort of envied him. He was sentenced to death, but he had the power to imagine any reality he fancied into existence. She could daydream with all of her considerable brainpower and she would still be trapped on a bus with Peter.

Michelle had made some pretty huge strides on her Peter problem since yesterday that she felt fairly proud of. She attributed most of this growth to anger, but it was a more failure emotion for her to live in that whatever fever state she had been in before. She only chanced one glance at Peter when he went to take a phone call in the back of the bus. When he was gone she realized how tense she had been sitting for the past hour.

Peter had been answering practically every other question, he was clearly doing whatever he could to get back into Liz’s good books though he didn’t have to work that hard. Liz had always favored him, he was smart and a team player, at least until recently. Michelle couldn’t help but notice that Liz’s attitude towards Peter had been shifting as he pulled away from the team.` It had been happening slowly, Michelle may have been the only one that noticed.

She was very observant.

She wasn’t sure why though. Did Liz flirt with Peter as a tool she used to get what she wanted? Because he was so clearly enamored with her that she knew she could manipulate him? Probably not. She probably didn't even realize that she was doing it. But what if she did? What if she liked him like he liked her?

Peter and Ned were huddled in the back of the bus playing some video game and once again Michelle berated herself for having developed a crush on someone so lame. She was wasting her time on a boy who would never look at her the way he looked at Liz, who had never read Dostoyevsky and was played with toys.

“Penis Parker” Flash yelled ringing his bell.

Liz looked wiped out. She had been quizzing them for hours and everyone was getting a bit punchy. The bells were exclusively being used for comedic purposes at this point and Mr. Harrington had fallen asleep. They were almost to DC, thankfully Michelle wouldn't have to deal with any of their nonsense for much longer. The bus driver had even agreed to drop her off near the Embassy before taking the rest of the team to the hotel.

The German Embassy was a large modern styled industrial building covered in rust-colored beams. There was already a crowd gathering in front of it by the time Michelle had arrived. They were chanting had signs that said things like ‘ACCORDS ARE NOT ENOUGH' or ‘STOP STARK'. Everyone here had come together under the idea that the American government wasn't doing enough to protect its people from the heroes that claimed to be there to save them.

It wasn’t Michelle’s first protest. Aunt Anna had pulled her out to countless demonstrations under the guise of babysitting when she was little. This was her first time at one alone, the first time that she was out for a cause that she really believed in. It felt empowering.

As she walked through the crowd she could hear a variety of people in vibrant debates.

“Why should we trust that Vision is so pure and good? He is a synthetic human that was made by Tony Stark and his evil robot!”

“We need accountability, the united states military serves and protects the American citizens!”

“Who do the Avengers serve? Who are they protecting?”

“We’re supposed to trust the government? The government was completely infiltrated by those Hydra Nazis just a couple of years ago!”

“Remember when Iron Man blew up all his suits? Wasn’t he supposed to be retired? Why would he do that? Is he ever going to stop? Can we even stop him”

“What’s all this about?” asked a tall blond guy around Michelle’s age, he had been standing towards the edge of the crowd watching.

Michelle noticed his shoes first. They were shiny black leather. What teenager wears expensive leather shoes on a Saturday afternoon? Then she took in the rest of him. His whole outfit looked simple but it was all pressed, new, and lux. His hair looked expertly quaffed like he was the mediocre looking son of a movie star.

“We’re protesting,” Michelle replied.

“I’m not an idiot, I can see that. What are you protesting?” He asked looking annoyed.

“We want stronger regulations for the government control of Enhanced Humans.” She explained. She didn’t like this guy, he looked like every smug entitled jerk she had to put up with her whole life.

“What’s wrong with what the defense department has been doing?” He asked.

“I don’t like the idea that our government can send a sentient being to destroy a whole city. I don’t like the idea that superhumans could be loaned out to foreign governments just like our military just because we never stopped and said they couldn’t.” Michelle argued, her tone getting sharper.

“If you were alright putting your fate in the military before the Avengers than why wouldn't you now that-” The blond jerk continued.

“Don’t act like your old enough to remember the world that didn’t have aliens invading our planet.” Michelle cut in. “We have a bigger responsibility now than a war between countries. If there has ever been motivation for the world to unite peacefully as a planet it’s right now. Instead, we're still stuck in fighting at the US Defense Department has a Hulk they can deploy.”

“So you think that we should roll over and surrender ourselves to the next intergalactic invader in the name of peace?” He was smirking. Michelle despised him

“That's not what I said!” She shouted then stopped herself, she had fallen right into his trap. Michelle took a deep breath and asked him, “What do you think we should do?”

“Whatever brings the greatest good for the most people.” He said smugly. It was the sort of non-answer that Michelle hated. It was more of an excuse to do awful things that everyone knows are wrong.

“So…You want us to just submit blind adherence to authority? Why should I trust a system that doesn’t look out for me?” Michelle sneered

“Better than your idea, What, we retire the Avengers? You all come out here and think that you're so clever and ‘woke’ but you have no idea whats going on or what you really want” He goaded her.

Michelle was furious but wasn't going to let him know it.

“I want comprehensive legislation that is carefully considered in regulating and controlling the military capabilities of the Avengers as well as any other unregistered Enhanced Individuals,” Michelle said steadily. “I want to know that the right people are held accountable when things go wrong, Like Tony Stark building a death robot or the defense department sending a nuke to New York during the Incident.”

The jerk took a moment to consider what she said or plan his next verbal spar. Michelle considered herself ready for both.

“I think I get it.” the guy said.

“You do?” She said slowly. He was still messing with her, she felt it in her gut.

“Yeah, you think Captain America is a dreamboat so you're out here fighting his fight.” He smirked, “It’s adorable, really.”

Michelle gave up, she wasn't going to change this guys mind, he benefited from the system. He had just trolling been her. Probably how rich dicks like him got off.

Michelle moved to storm off but the crowd had engulfed them.

“You know, your kinda cute for this whole social-justice scene,” The stranger breathed down her neck

“Excuse me?” She gasped whipping back around.

“The whole hippy-dippy, patchouli and Birkenstock thing doesn’t usually do it for me, but for you might be willing to make an exception” He announced as though appraising her

“Eww.” She grimaced.

Michelle felt disgusted angry and strangely vulnerable. She had grown up in the city and knew how to take care of herself. She had to stay aware of her surroundings and listen to her gut.

Right now Michelle’s gut was sending her alarm bells.

She was alone in a new city amongst a crowd of strangers and was now being followed by some creepy asshole who probably didn't have a strong grasp on the word ‘No’.

He leaned down closer to Michelle, she wanted to run but there was nowhere to go. “Curly, you know you are just aching to be my girl.” he cooed staring at her with hungry eyes. Michelle had to get out of there.

“I’m nobody girl but my own.” Michelle slowly articulated through her teeth.

The greasy son-of-a-bitch actually started laughing. Michelle wondered if she could just slip away into the crowd to lose him, but he was a lot taller than her and would probably be able to follow her unless she got a decent head start.

“Ok, whatever” He chuckled “You’re good for a laugh, but don’t let it get to your head. I’m not looking for anything long-term here either.”

Michelle wanted to deck him.

She wanted to shatter the cartilage in his nose and send him crying home to his daddy, but Liz would make her life hell if she broke her buzzer hand the day before a competition. Also, he seemed exactly like the kind of petty man baby that would have her arrested for assault.

So instead she asked him what his name was.

“Harry.” He answered still leering at her.

“Fuck you Harry.” she cursed.

Then she spat in his face.

Michelle had been spat on by strangers on three separate occasions, it was disgusting and traumatizing each time, but that was par the course of living in New York.

She had never spat on anyone else before.

She had expected to miss, probably grossing him out and distracting him long enough for her to slip into the crowd and disappear. Instead, the wad of saliva soared through the air pelting Harry right in his eye.

Michelle was so stunned by her accuracy she almost forgot to run, then he started howling and she knew she was on borrowed time.

Quickly, she slipped through the crowd towards the nearest metro station, careful not to run and draw attention to herself unless Harry was still looking for her.

When she knew she was in the clear Michelle began to laugh, first a little giggle but it soon erupted into a full body, side-aching laugh that she couldn't stop. She thought about the look on that pricks face was a priceless image she would carry with her to her grave.

She couldn’t wait to tell aunt Anna. She was going to be so proud.

When she got to the hotel most of the team had already gathered for dinner in the lobby next elevators.

“Hey, Michelle” Peter called to her when she walked in. She wanted to smile but knew she would hate herself so she just flipped him off again and allowed a grin to spread across her lips as Peter face flashed to confusion and then offense.

Ned asked her how the protest had been so she told them.

“I spit in the eye of some trust-fund douchebag.” She said simply.

“That's the spirit!” Said Mr. Harrington.

“Wait? Seriously? Or was that a metaphor?” Asked Ned.

“No, I really did spit in the eye of some gross jackass with expensive shoes,” Michelle told them.

“Oh,” sighed Mr. Harrington, heavy with the regret of endorsing her behavior.

“Really?” Ned squeaked.

“That's awesome” breathed Peter.

Michelle told herself that she didn't care. If only she could actually believe that. What kind of guy thinks it cool for girls to spit ever, let alone on a person.

“What happened?” asked Sally who had just come out of the elevators with Cindy and Liz noticing how the team was hovering around Michelle.

“Michelle spat on some rich guy!” Peter gushed.

“In the eye.” She corrected.

“In the eye!” He added enthusiastically.

Cindy looked appalled but Liz looked like someone just told her Michelle was Spider-Man.

“WHAT!” She exclaimed, “Get it done girl, good for you!”

“What? Why? Was he just there?” Cindy asked incredulously.

“He was just a sleazy kid-“

“A kid!” Cindy cut in.

“Settle down Moony, he was our age. Just some entailed prick who didn’t seem to have a clear understanding of the consent,” said Michelle impassively.

“What?” croaked Peter.

“Awesome” Liz marveled “That's pretty badass.”

“Really? That's a low bar” remarked Michelle “Wait until you hear the story about how I murdered that drifter.”

“Well save it for later because we’re rooming together,” Liz said pulling out a card key for her.

Liz wouldn't have been her first choice of roommate, but with only three options and one of them being Cindy Moon Michelle wasn’t going to complain.

“Some guy in Brooklyn one spit right in my mouth,” said Charles suddenly.

“Dude, we’re about to eat!” Michelle heard Flash whispering disgusted.

“What? It’s fine when it’s Michelle talking about it.” Said Charles.

“None of this is fine. Let's go to dinner” Mr. Harrington interrupted in a feeble attempt regain control of his team and get them to the restaurant for their reservation

“This way Tigers!” He cheered leading the way.

No one followed him.

“You just told us an objectively disgusting fact about your life, what does that have to do with Michelle on some misogynist?” Liz asked Charles, arching her flawless eyebrows.

“I don’t see any difference,” said Charles defiantly.

“Ok, I’ll dumb it down for you, Michelle is cooler than you,” Liz explained.

“Michelle is cooler than all of us really,” Peter added. The rest of the team nodded in agreement. Except for Cindy, of course.

“I’m cooler than everyone,” Michelle added breezily before pushing forward towards the hotel restaurant where Mr. Harrington had been anxiously waiting for them. She tried to brush off what Peter had just said but she knew they would still be replaying in her head posthumously.

After dinner, Michelle followed Liz to their room. The beds were covered with flash cards and subject binders as well several sheets of scrap paper that Cindy would anxiously scratch on with when she was anxious.

“Sorry,” Liz said surveying the mess, “Clearly, we were really raging here earlier.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Bummer I missed it.”

“Well, If you're up for it I was thinking that we should get the whole team to sneak down to the pool tonight,” Liz suggested.

“When were you thinking this?” Michelle asked skeptically, gathering up flash cards. “Last week when you made sure that bathing suits were on the list of crap to bring?”

“I may have planned for something like this. I wanted to read the group first, see how you were doing. Besides, a rebellious group activity the day before a competition is good for morale.” Liz explained.

“Did you get that from a coaching book?” Michelle asked bemused hopping onto her bed.

“No!” Liz insisted. “But I might have heard it in a TED talk…” She was blushing “I know you’re so not into that kinda thing, but please, you’re the coolest person on the team by a mile.”

“I’m the coolest person on the team?” Michelle asked.

“Absolutely, you're quiet and mysterious. Cool kids are always quiet, they know they don’t have to say anything.” Said Liz. She had found her suit and had gone to change.

“Maybe I just don’t have anything to say?” Michelle postulated.

“Bullshit! A brain like yours always has something to say.” Liz called from the bathroom. “You aren’t trying to win anyone over, and you don’t need to because you know you're beyond them.”

“One person’s cool in another person’s reclusive outcast, but whatever,” Michelle said dismissively. If Liz heard her she made no indication.

“Like today” she went on, “You were out protesting and spitting on jerks by yourself while I sat in here and quizzed Cindy on astral bodies for the hundredth time.” Liz sighed before opening the door to the bathroom and adding “Your kind of my hero.”

Liz looked like a mermaid, none of this wasn’t exactly motivating Mechelle to join her and the others at the pool.

“Are you fucking with me?” Michelle asked sincerely, even if her tone didn’t reflect it.

  
“Are you really arguing with me about being cool? Because the longer you do the less badass you seem.” Liz joked.

“I mean,” she started “I’ve always thought I was cool, I just never imagined anyone else would.”

“Everyone else does.” Liz insisted.

“Everyone? Cindy? Betty? Tony Stark?” Michelle asked sardonically.

“Fine! Not everyone.” Liz allowed, rolling her eyes before adding, “Not yet at least.”

Michelle really didn’t want to go to swimming but Liz was being really friendly. She could go downstairs and just read, but Flash would probably throw her book in the pool. She looked up at Liz, who was already pouting and didn’t look likely to stop anytime soon.

“Fine,” Michelle sighed rolling off her bed. Liz was practically glowing.

“Really?” She asked again.

“If it means that much to you, yeah, sure.” Michelle shrugged.

“I would hug you but I know that you would hate that so…” Liz said before just taking a giant step backward from Michelle. “Is that the inverse of a hug?” she asked.

Michelle laughed and took a smaller step back herself.

“If I’m doing this can we also grab all the candy in the mini bar?” Michelle asked. “I’ve been eyeing that Toblerone since we walked in here.”

Liz’s eyes lit up, “Yes! that's brilliant. You're so smart.”

“That’s kinda why I’m here.” Michelle reminded her.

Liz started loading up her bag with candy bars, chips, and nuts. “Holy shit, then candy bars are $11 a pop.” She gasped looking at the menu.

“Have you never stayed in a hotel before?” Michelle asked her while she unloaded her books from her bag looking for her swimsuit.

Liz rolled her eyes “Of course, I’m just always surprised.” she explained.

“Well, Midtown’s footing the bill, your chairman of everything, consider this back pay in salt and sugar.” Michelle mused.

That made Liz laugh, and Michelle even grinned a little. She and Liz had never really connected before. She had always been friendly to everyone, but Michelle was never nice to anyone. It surprised her how easily it seemed to happen.

“I’m going to get the others and grab the provisions from their rooms. We’ll meet you downstairs?” Liz asked.

Michelle nodded pulling her swimsuit from her bag. It was old and faded, but she didn’t think it would matter. No one was expecting her to walk in looking like Liz.

She changed quickly and grabbed her copy of _The Brothers Karamazov_. She had read it before so if Flash did decide to toss it in the pool she wouldn’t have to drown him.

As she slowly made her way towards the elevator reading the forward she saw someone out of the corner of her eye.

She knew immediately that it was Peter. She could tell by the way that he walked and the way her heart picked up in pace as soon as she saw his figure. She could always tell now.

He was heading towards the stairs and Michelle thought about calling out to him so they could walk downstairs together but wouldn't. It felt out of character for her, besides she couldn’t remember how to talk to Peter without just insulting him anymore. Not that she was talking to him at all. Instead she just quietly followed him as he ducked through the door marked ‘Stairs’.

When Michelle stepped into the stairwell herself she saw that Peter was heading up, not down towards the pool.

She wondered what he was up to before she reminded herself that what he was doing wasn’t remotely suspicious. It was her overactive imagination that was trying to entice her into trying to follow him and she wasn’t going to indulge it.

Peter wasn’t hiding anything. He was just a nice, benign kid who also happened to have a very symmetrical face that made Michelle act like a crazy person.

She wasn’t going to dwell on it. If Peter wanted to sneak out of the hotel and get himself expelled then that wasn’t her problem. She walked downstairs resolved to not think about Peter again for the rest of the night. Liz wanted them to bond as a team, it was clear that Peter didn’t care about that.

Everyone else was already messing around in the pool when Michelle got there, she found the chair that seemed to be the furthest from the splash zone and cracked open her book.

“Hey! Where’s Penis Parker? Weren’t he and Ned meeting us down here?” Flash asked.

Michelle thought about him quickly running up the hotel stairs and the pushed the thought away. It wasn’t her business and she didn’t care anyway.

“They probably just got caught up in some fight about Star Trek,” said Charles.

“It takes a lot of effort to be the biggest loser at the top STEM school in New York” Flash joked laughing at his own joke.

“It’s more embarrassing to be the biggest idiot there though,” Michelle added without looking up from her book.

The pool erupted with laughter while Flash sunk into the water to hide the red blush covering his face.

“Michelle, what were you protesting today?” Asked Liz.

“Stronger regulations for Enhanced Individuals” Michelle answered without looking away from her page.

“What? Like the Sokovia Accords?” Asked Cindy.

“That was a start,” Michelle said, looking up from her book. “We don’t like that our government is now in charge of when and where the Avengers get pointed. We want accountability for when an enhanced person runs through your fence or destroys your hometown in a fire-fight with killer robots.”

“So, you want to police Peter’s best buddy Spider-Man?” Flash snarked.

“Well, they don’t sell Avengers Insurance, and even if they did, the Spider-Man damage wouldn't be covered because he hasn't signed the Accords.” Michelle shot back, “The accords only apply to the Avengers anyway”

“So you hate all the heroes that have saved the planet and your life multiple times?” Flash asked he was getting defensive.

“I don’t hate any of them and I don’t think Spider-Man is a bad guy. I’m just saying there are a lot of these guys than when we were kids. What if the next one can fly and uses that power to deal weapons or worse?” Michelle argued

“I mean… We already have that…” Sally said carefully from the pool.

Everyone slowly turned to her confused.

“Haven’t you heard of the Long Island Moth Man?” She asked. “There have been all this crazy sighting of some kind of giant flying monster over the old industrial parks, none of you have seen this? It’s all over the Internet!” Sally said paddling towards her phone on the deck.

“So, Michelle,” Abe started slowly, “You are saying someone has to look out for the little guy. If the Avengers are fighting on behalf of our government than our governments must take responsibility for their damages,”

“But I thought that's what the Sokovia Accords were all about?” Asked Liz.

“The truth is, the Accords are pretty vague when it comes to who is fiscally responsible for the damage done in the Avengers wake. We know Tony Stark gets paid for it, we know that other Enhanced Individuals get arrested refusing to sign up to be a human weapon of mass destruction on behalf of the US government. We know they don’t get a trial, they give that right when they become an Avenger. It’s all pretty messed up when you start looking into it… ”

Michelle looked around and notice that everyone was now staring at her slack-jawed.

“What?” she asked.

“This is legitimately the longest I have ever heard you talk about anything.” Said Cindy.

“It the first time any of us have talked about anything remotely interesting.” Michelle shot back cold opening her book again.

“I found it!” Sally shouted holding her phone in the air triumphantly “The Long Island Moth Man! See for yourself!”

Everyone began to huddle around Sally’s phone to look at the new human insect in Queens. Michelle sighed and turned back to her book. She knew enough real monsters not to bother with urban legends.

Michelle and Liz went upstairs with everyone before they spit towards their respective rooms.

“Should I stop to check on Peter?” Liz suddenly asked Michelle when they were alone.

“Why?” Michelle questioned slowly.

“He did say he would come swimming and he never showed…I’m just a little worried,” Liz said nervously.

“He’s probably sleeping.” Suggested Michelle, although he gut told her he probably wasn’t.

“But what if he just disappeared again?” Asked Liz, she looks worried.

“Where else would he even go?” Michelle asked her, thinking about Peter running up the stairs going who knows where.

“Abducted by aliens? Who knows where he goes? Is it totally weird though? Right?” Liz asked Michelle.

“It is weird.” Michelle agreed.

“Do you ever wonder if he’s hiding something from us?” Liz asked her and Michelle wondered if perhaps it was possible that Peter was a mysterious enigma to everyone else not just in her paranoid mind trying to cope with feeling that she wasn’t ready to understand.

“No.” Said Michelle decisively. “Peter is awful at keeping secrets.”

Liz nodded in agreement.

Liz was a surprisingly easy person to talk to. She actually listened which was a surprise. Michelle had always imagined that she must have loved the sound of her own voice since she was always the team captain or the committee chairman. She could see now that was never the case. Liz wanted to be governor or a senator, something in public service to give back to her community. She was a great leader and Michelle should have been able to see that sooner.

She wasn’t nearly as observant as she let herself believe.

“I just wish that I could just stand up and say what I want to say for once. I’m always the one leading the discussion or asking questions. For once I want to be the one with the answers,” Liz was saying when they got back to the room.

“It’s a good thing you became the captain of our academic decathlon team then.” Michelle joked checking the time on her phone.

She had a new message from Mrs. Gonzales. She knew the Michelle was out of town this weekend, so it couldn’t be babysitting.

It was a video of Noah along with the message ‘we’re rooting for you!’. Michelle couldn’t help but smile as she hit play. It was Noah in his play pin bouncing up and down shouting ‘MJ! MJ! MJ!”. His big puffy cheeks were glowing red with joy.

“What?” Liz asked noticing Michelle grinning.

“Just a video of the kid I babysit,” Michelle said, tossing Liz her phone to see.

“Aww, too cute!” Cooed Liz.

“MJ?” she asked looking up at Michelle at the end of the video.

“Yeah, he hasn't been able to get mouth around Michelle quite yet,” she explained curling up on her bed.

“I think it suits you.” She said tossing her phone back, “They are your initials after all, and Michelle always sounded to conventional for you.”

“And MJ’s not? It just sounds like an overused 90’s throwback.” Michelle argued.

“Yeah, but an iconic throwback! Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan. I think you would do the name justice.” Said Liz. Michelle considered it, she didn’t hate it when Liz explained it like that.

“Whatever,” Michelle said shrugging. She was tired, she wanted to sleep. “It’s always cute coming out of a baby’s mouth.” she conceded.

Liz, however, seemed to be charged with adrenaline.

“I never would have pegged you as the babysitting type.” Liz chattered. “No offense, you aren't exactly know for your warmth.”

“I guess, babies worlds are simple,” Michelle slowly explained. “nothing is broken for them yet. They are the embodiment of innocence and optimism. Sometimes even my ice cold heart needs a little of that.”

She had never really considered herself a baby person until her sister left. It was strange to know that she had a niece or nephew out in the world that she knew nothing about. For a while, part of her believed that Gayle would come back. That she would need help from her mother and Michelle, so she had begun helping out with the kids in the building. She knew now that her sister was never going to come back home.

“So, MJ, what about you?” Liz asked. Michelle pulled herself up accepting that she wasn’t going to be getting to sleep anytime soon. “What are your plans after high school.”

“I have a bit longer to figure it out than you do I guess.” Michelle deflected.

“You must have some idea. Writer? Publisher? Activist? Eco-terrorist?” Suggested Liz

“Bit of everything I imagine,” Michelle said impassively.

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter, you always excel at everything you try.” Said Liz.

There was something in her voice that sounded different, it sounded like jealousy.

“Not everything…” Michelle said quietly, although she couldn’t think of anything off the top of her head. Social skills, she was lacking in those, but that was out of choice. “You shouldn't have to worry about succeeding. Your one of those people that everyone will fall over backward to help. Just look at Peter.”

“What do you mean by that” Liz challenged.

“You know that that boy would do a backflip for you if you asked him, right? He’s been obsessed with you since he met you.” Michelle teased, hoping to quash the nasty troll that had wandered into her mind. If Liz could be envious of her then she had no reason to indulge those feeling herself.

Those thoughts were toxic.

“I know, I’m not blind,” Liz said rolling her eyes. “I just wish that he would just be honest about whatever is going on. I would understand. I have to deal with enough secrets at home.”

“Is it possible that you might like him too? You know like he likes you, well, without the drooling?” Michelle asked, she didn’t want to hear the answer, but knew she needed to.

“Maybe…” Liz answered carefully. “Kinda? I don’t know!” Liz cried burying her face in a pillow.

“Why are you embarrassed? Peter’s smart and he’s nice and he likes you. What’s there to even be embarrassed about” Michelle asked softly.

“He’s younger than me,” Liz said blushing.

“So?” Michelle asked rolling her eyes.

“You don’t think it's weird?” Asked Liz.

“I’m probably not the best person to ask about weird, but if your genders were reversed you wouldn’t care.” Michelle pointed out. She had always hated that double standard.

“That's what I keep telling myself.” Liz breathed. “It shouldn’t matter right?”

“Liz, This is the 21st century, most people suck and the ones that don’t are never going to be perfect so if you happen to have caught feelings for someone who likes you and isn’t an asshole then whats the point in dancing around it.” Michelle reasoned.

Michelle knew that Peter would never look at her the way he did at Liz and she had accepted it. Maybe seeing him happy with someone else would help her let go.

“You make some really good points,” Liz mumbled, burying her face back into her pillow.

“That's because I’m an intellectual, it’s all I know how to do,” Michelle said stoically.

“I can’t talk about this anymore. Tell me about you.” Pleaded Liz sitting back up on her bed.

“What about me?” Michelle asked skeptically. Michelle had a bad feeling she was heading into girly bonding sleepover territory. She did not want her nails painted.

“Your love life, whats going on? Any special guys or girls?” Liz prodded.

“Do I really seem like the dating type?” Asked Michelle sarcastically.

“I mean yeah, kinda.” Liz replied, “you're so smart and gorgeous and effortlessly cool. You seem like you could be low-key dating someone in college or, like, be the secret girlfriend of some Asgardian prince or something”

“You think I’m dating Thor?” Michelle asked slowly.

“No! Just that, you're a total enigma. It wouldn’t surprise me if you were dating Thor I guess. I mean, he seems kinda simple for you, but maybe you're into that. Like, watching reality TV but dating. Also, he’s really old, I mean he's hot, but isn't he also like, 500 years old…” Liz rambled on like that for a while. When she stopped Michelle hoped she would just move on, or better yet, go to sleep. Instead, Liz just stared at Michelle with a sort of sour look on her face for an uncomfortable amount of time.

“What?” Michelle finally asked her.

“You're not dating Thor right?” Asked Liz.

“What? No!” Michelle laughed. Liz clearly needed to go to bed, she was losing her mind. “I’m not really interested in dating anyone alright, or getting married ever. I’m not getting trapped in that loop of loveless marriages like my parents did. I’m trying to break that cycle.” Explained Michelle.

“You weren’t just trying to psych me out just then?” Liz asked cautiously.

“No! Why would I psych out my team captain five hours before a competition.” Michelle cried collapsing back into her pillow hoping that Liz would get the hint and let her sleep.

“Fine, ok.” Liz pouted, “I get it.” she said and turned off the light.

“Night Liz.” Michelle yawned.

“Night MJ,” said Liz.

Michelle didn’t hate it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry was a one-off Easter-Egg for Amazing Spider-Man #97  
> Canonically that Harry Osborn was in the middle of a 1950’s comic book addiction spiral  
> don't @ me


	5. Face it Tiger

Michelle had never been afraid of anything. It’s not the sort of thing that you can invent or fake. She never needed a night-light or got vertigo in high places. She had never been afraid of her mother and father despite their volatile outbursts. She hadn't even been afraid when she had been cornered by that gross prick the day before. Michelle was always fearless.

And yet as she watched Peter Parker scaling the face of the Washington Monument in his bright red Spider-Man suit to save the rest of her friends Michelle was terrified.

She felt useless, all she could do was stand there and wait. She could hardly breathe, her heart was racing out of rhythm. Michelle fleetingly remembered how smug she had been feeling just a few minutes before.

They had made it into the final bracket at the decathlon finals and were tied at the end of the last round. The morning had been a chaotic fury. Peter had, unsurprisingly, gone missing in the night. Ned made up some lie about food-poisoning to try and cover up his absence, but no one bought it.

“We have now entered sudden death, the next correct answer wins the championship.” Announced the moderator. Michelle could feel the tension in the room tighten around her, but she was serine, grateful to only have one problem at that moment.

“What is the sum of ‘e’ raised to the power ‘i times pi’ and 1?” asked the moderator.

Michelle loved these kinds of problems, it was combining math's 5 most fundamental constants and three most fundamental operations. It requires your mind to function on several different levels at once. It was a miracle these numbers were even related, they collectively combine trigonometry, calculus, geometry, group theory, and complex numbers which are seemingly unrelated fields and yet they all snapped together into Michelle’s mind.

She tapped her bell to answer.

Zero.

Simple, clean, clear as spring water. Michelle could feel her mind still whirring at full capacity after she said it while in her mind other smaller gears were still falling into place until all the pieces fit together perfectly.

“Correct!” The moderator cheered as the rest of the team attacked her in a sort of dog-pile hug.

Everything happened in slow motion as the revelation fell over her.

Peter Parker was Spider-Man

She felt a self-satisfied warmth speed down to her toes. All the questions she had been rolling over, all the loose ends could be neatly tied up at once with one simple solution. Suddenly all the power that he had over her dissipated.

It seemed that the cure for a consuming crush is to figure out that they are really just another selfish show-off. The more Michelle thought about it the more obvious it became.

Was Peter even trying to keep it a secret?

He wasn’t like the Spider-Man, at least not the Peter she knew. Peter was kind and shy where Spider-Man was reckless and boisterous. Now that Michelle knew they were the same person she felt as though she had finally seen the real Peter that had been hiding all along, and she didn’t like him as much.

Just the day before she had been standing in an enormous crowd of people who wanted to make the world safer from people like Peter. Spider-Man may be trying to do the right thing, but Peter Parker had been blindly running into situations that just made peoples lives harder. Just that morning he had blown-off the whole team so he could run off and play hero while Cindy practically had a panic attack.

Michelle was feeling like her old self again, she could go back to how things had been before puberty got in her way. She knew that she had to confront Peter, he had probably been getting all his advice from people like Tony Stark. People who were just as destructive as he was. Someone had to set him straight and remind him that he has a responsibility to look out for people instead of chasing after fights without any reason.

She couldn’t wait to see the look on his face, she should have her phone ready so she could take a picture.

The whole team was jubilant from their win. Flash was so cheerful that under different circumstances Michelle would have punched him, but she was too pleased with her own internal victory to care. He swaggered out of the building holding their trophy high over his head before tripping and falling on his face like he deserved. Everyone got a good laugh at his expense, even Cindy who seemed relaxed for the first time in months.

Michelle was happy, but she had never really cared about winning or losing. Some people are programmed to compete like Olympians or politicians. Michelle had been a very competitive kid, her sister had stopped playing board games with her when she was 12. That warrior spirit had faded as she got older and so she kept her distance from the others, especially Liz.

The two of them had gotten far too chummy last night and Michelle didn’t want her to start assuming they were friends or anything. Liz was nice, but Michelle had always considered herself a loner by nature. If she didn’t start pushing Liz away now it would only be harder later.

The last thing she wanted was to alarm anyone by changing the behavior that they had become accustomed to. So Michelle did what she always did and put a book between herself and everyone else.

Mr. Harrington had suggested that they all take a trip to the top of the Washington Monument to celebrate before heading back to the city. Michelle wasn’t interested in celebrating the memory of a man that was somehow considered heroic for freeing his slaves after his death or experiencing his monument that had been built on the backs of slaves working in stone quarries so she opted to enjoy the fresh air with her long time companion, Marcel Proust.

Michelle felt unbound sitting in the sunlight. Everything had fallen into place and she finally felt like she was back in control of herself.

Suddenly a concussive blast went off somewhere near the top of the Monument and Michelle’s world cracked like the giant blocks of marble overhead.

She jumped to her feet trying to see what had happened but the sun was glaring into her eyes making it impossible to see.

“No, no no no, Karen whats going on up there?” She heard someone crying next to her. From the corner of her eye, she could see it was Spider-Man.

“My friends are up there!” She cried.

“What! Uh… Don’t worry ma'am everything is going to be okay.” said the Spider-Man sprinting towards the base pushing people out of his way.

It wasn't until she heard his voice that Michelle remembers that it was Peter under that mask. He sounded terrified. She tried to reconcile the image of the geek that liked legos and only had one friend with the figure in red claiming up the side of the structure.

She tried to shield the sun from her eyes to try and track Peter as he scrambled further up, becoming a smaller with every second. She had a metallic taste in her mouth like she had been sucking on a coin. It must be what fear tasted like.

At some point, Peter rounded one of the corners. Michelle couldn't remember moving her feet but she had followed him all the same, desperately trying to track him against the bright white marble. She tried not to think about what might have happened inside, her whole team could be dead already.

She should have been there too, but she had been so repulsed by the idea of spending time with people that liked and respected her that she had isolated herself. How could she ever explain to all their parents that she hadn’t liked their children enough to join them when they lost their lives?

Peter had climbed over the ledge leading to the peak of the tower she could barely see him now. Michelle stayed focused on him, he might be a showboat, but he was the best chance that her friends had if her friends had any chance at all. She didn’t even see the police chopper fly in until they were right next to Peter who had been jumping on one of the windows in an attempt to break in.

For a moment Michelle was relieved. It wasn’t just Peter up there on his own anymore, the police would help.

“Stand down!” She heard a voice blaring from the helicopter when she remembered that Spider-Man was a vigilante, and police went found of people like him doing their job for them. 

She remembered what Mr. Gonzales had told her before she left on the trip. If the cops in New York had gone sour on Spider-Man she could only imagine what the DC police were thinking. The city was still recovering from the events at the Triskelion a few years back.

“Return to the ground or we will open fire!” The voice rang out again. Michelle was trembling. She knew that Peter wouldn’t give up. Ned was somewhere inside still and she was sure that he would sooner be gunned down than go on living his life with the guilt of leaving his best friend to die. He was stupidly stubborn that way.

But what could he do? They had him cornered, there was nowhere he could hide. She could see the small red dot climbing further up than before. She hoped that he had a plan because she couldn’t see any way out for him.

The voice spoke again “This is your last chance….”

She didn’t know when the Academic decathlon team had become her friends, but they were now as far as she was concerned. Peter was going to die. She was about to watch her friend get gunned down or fall to his death. The police would shoot him down any second now, then the rest of her friends would be doomed. Michelle felt as though she were watching someone else’s life flash before her eyes.

Suddenly, Peter leapt into the air diving under the helicopter and using webbing to swing himself through the window. Michelle hadn’t realized that she was holding her breath until she let out a long sigh of relief. Peter was inside, everything would be ok.

At least she imagined that it would be, she had no way to tell. No one on the ground had any idea what was going on or what had even happened to begin with. Michelle felt the anxiety building up in her chest, it became clear that the worst part of all of this was the not knowing.

She had no idea how long she stood there paralyzed by the unknown, waiting to hear anything about what was happening inside. Michelle was prepared for everything but good news, It was how she was wired. Her mind automatically would find the worst case scenario in any situation and stay focused on the worst possible outcome until she knew more.

Sirens were coming from all sides but to Michelle the felt miles away. It wasn't until she felt a hand on her arm that she realized that everyone else had been pushed back by emergency services.

“Ma’am we need you to clear the area, it's not safe.” a firefighter was saying to her but Michelle didn’t register his words. She wouldn't move, she couldn’t, not until she knew what was going on. The fighter pulled on her arm to try and get her to move.

“No!” She snapped, “I can’t go!”

“Ma’am it’s not safe for anyone to be in this area, I need you to move,” He said again taking her other arm in his hand and forcing her away

“No! My friends are up there! You don’t understand! I can’t-“ Michelle begged through tears. She didn’t know when she had begun to cry, she hadn't noticed. Her cheeks were streaked with salty tears. She hadn’t cried in years, it surpassed her that she still knew how.

She tried to wrestle her way out of the mans grasp but it was futile. She should have participated in gym class instead of acting like a smart-ass, she would have fared better.

As she was getting dragged away kicking she saw someone stumbling out of the entrance at the base of the monument.

“Spider-Man!” She cried in relief.

The fireman paused and looked up at Peter, waiting to hear anything about what had happened inside. The crowd behind Michelle burst out cheering, she turned to see a massive group of people and news crews all watching as Peter ran came running straight towards them

“Your friends are all ok ma’am!” He called pointing at Michelle before jumping on top of one of the fire trucks and swinging past his audience on a tree branch, many tried to follow him, but Michelle guessed that he would lose them quickly.

“Thanks…” she whispered as she felt her legs give way under her falling to her knees. He did it, he might be a jerk when he put on that suit but the one quality that she knew that Spider-Man and Peter Parker shared it was their indomitable will. She crawled back up to her feet with the help of the fireman and let him escort her behind the police line.

The aftermath of the excitement was a blur of sirens and news cameras. Michelle’s teammates had emerged from the monument shaken to a flurry of reporters and police desperate for any morsel of information that they could run with. Mr. Harrington, who seemed to be the most visibly traumatized of the group, made it clear that no one from Midtown would be commenting Flash still managed to sneak a quote to a few cameras. Abe had his arm wrapped tightly around Cindy’s shoulder while Flash hugged their first place trophy tightly. Liz was still trembling when she approached Michelle.

She felt so stupid for trying to act so cool and aloof earlier. Liz was probably the closest thing that Michelle had to a friend at Midtown and she had almost lost her. It was stupid and childish, she could see that now.

The police escorted them back to their hotel, where Liz and Ned filled in Michelle on the details of what had happened inside. They were in the elevator when the explosion went off, it had cut through the roof and was barely hanging on. The others managed to climb out to the platform safely, but Liz, Ned and Mr. Harrington were still stuck when the roof gave way.

Liz’s eyes were glassy as she slowly recounted the events that had transpired, she seemed to be fully processing it while she spoke. Michelle listened quietly, trying to piece together Liz’s story with her own.

“Then Spider-Man just dropped in and he, like, shot his web and started pulling the elevator!” Ned cut in “It was amazing!”. He didn’t seem as traumatized by what had happened as the rest were. Michelle had assumed that Ned knew about Peter’s double life, but she wondered if he knew a bit more than that.

“Then the roof gave way before I could get out,” Liz added softly, a sharp contrast to Ned’s excitement. Michelle could feel her eyes bugging out of her head. “Spider-Man saved me, he caught me with his webbing and saved me.”

Michelle had imagined every possible horrific scenario but not in her worst nightmares could she imagine the horror Liz must have felt when the floor gave way under her.

When they got back to the hotel Peter was waiting for them in the lobby.

“Hey, I saw on the news, is everyone ok?” He was a better liar than Michelle gave him credit for. 

She wanted to ask him if he was ok. She wanted to thank him or slap him for being so reckless. Not today though, it would have to wait until the timing was right. Peter could keep his secret for today.

He pulled Ned aside and Michelle tried to focus on what they were saying.

“Dude, I’m so sorry, I tried to tell you about the glowy thing-“ Peter whispered.

“It's fine man, were all ok.” Ned whispered back, “But that was so cool dude! You were awesome! Liz couldn’t stop talking about you!”

“Really? Wait never mind, It’s not important. That glowy thing was a Chitauri power core. These guys are making weapons out of some really dangerous stuff.”

“But you stopped them right?” Ned asked.

“I stopped them from stealing anything else from Damage Control, but I got stopped by that guy with the giant metal wings and he got away. They have some insane tech-“ He went on as he and Ned moved further away But Michelle’s feet had been fused to the ground.

Peter was the reason that the explosion happened. He’s gone on some sort of hunt to bring down crime lords and was careless enough to bring a strange glowing thing along with him on this trip and had put the entire team in danger. He had no idea what he was doing but still somehow felt proud of himself.

Michelle was furious that he would be so careless and caviler about it. Everyone looked at Peter Parker as some kind of whiz-kid but he wasn’t. He was an idiot who was so busy playing hero he never stopped to think about what else might happen.

He wasn't even supposed to have been there in the first place.

The bus back was a stark contrast to the trip they had taken there. Everyone was stoic and kept their heads down. Cindy and Abe were quietly huddled together in front of Michelle while Liz made hushed calls to her mother and Betty. Charles and Flash were in the back but they weren't joking around like they typically would have. Sally was sitting across from her with her forehead pressed up against the window, Ned and Peter were sitting behind her, whispering amounts themselves. Mr. Harrington had been staring straight ahead the entire trip, disconnected from reality.

Michelle had been spying on Peter out of the corner of her eye. He looked exhausted. Michelle wondered if he felt any responsibility for what had happened or if he was just proud of himself for being the hero. She used to be able to read Peter’s face like a book, at least she thought she had. She realized that everything she had thought she knew about him was a lie.

She kept coming back to the idea of telling him that she knew. That way she could drag him through the dirt for all his stupid behavior. He had people like Ned and Tony Stark to build him up, he clearly needed someone to burst his ego. Michelle didn’t want to be responsible for Peter’s actions. He had created this mess himself, why should she clean it up.

If he felt any guilt at all then it didn’t match his face. He looked tired but pleased with himself, he had a glow about him that Michelle hated. He had been brave and he had saved the day, but it was all from a problem that he created, he shouldn't feel proud of that.

It didn’t help that #Spiderman had been trending the whole ride home. Michelle had been in no less than 50 twitter fights so far and had won every last one of them. Each triumph energized her to dive back into the fray and emerge victorious once again.

She felt the air getting thicker and realized that they must be close to the city. She scared the bus and saw that everyone else seemed to be sound asleep except for Liz who was staring out the window when Michell caught her eye.

“Hey, MJ,how are you doing?” Liz asked her.

“Me? I’m fine, I wasn’t the one who almost fell to their death.” Michelle said coldly causing Liz to cringe. “Sorry…” she said slowly. Now really wasn't the time to be snarky, it had just been a reflex.

“It’s ok, I’m alive, but you know that it's ok if you’re not… ok, that is” Liz said softly

“I’m fine, I’m been dragging Twitter eggs,” Michelle said waving her phone at her.

“How’s that going?” Liz asked.

“I’m destroying them.” Michelle replied with a smug smile.

“I don’t know what else I expected,” Liz said rolling her eyes. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Of course you can’t,” insisted Michelle, “you don’t just get over things like this.”

“I know. I’m dreading school on Monday, everyone is going to want to know what happened…” Liz drifted off.

“Maybe, who knows? Maybe tomorrow a sinkhole will swallow up Midtown and your problems are solved.” Michelle suggested which managed to get a small smile to crack on Liz’s face.

“I just want to forget it, just for a second. Just… remember how it feels to be normal. You know?”

Michelle did know. She glanced over at Peter but he had his hood over up obstructing his face. She felt a wave of shame in herself for letting herself get so wound up in something as elementary as a crush. It all seemed so juvenile now.

She could only think of one thing that might help settle Liz’s nerves, it had always worked on Noah. She quickly scanned the bus to be sure that everyone else was sound asleep.

She began to sing, softly at first, her voice getting stronger as she went on. It was an old Broadway standard that Gayle used to sing all the time when they were little. It was a song about hope and looking forward. She couldn’t be sure if it was any comfort to Liz, but it it was all she knew how to do in times like these.

When the song was over Michelle kept her eyes fixed on her hands, positive that she had made a fool of herself.

“That was really beautiful,” Liz said softly when someone else began slowly clapping.

Michelle’s head shot up to see Peter looking at her with a small smile on his face. Michelle felt a weird flutter in her chest. She buried the butterflies and shot Peter her best withering stare causing him to go rigid and sink back into his seat.

She wondered again if she should tell him that she knew his secret. She was beyond frustrated with him but she couldn't deny that the two of them shared at least one thing in common, they were both hiding. Peter was literally hiding behind a mask while Michelle hides behind her sarcasm and books. She couldn’t find anything else that the two of them might share, but she realized that she had only just seen the real Peter Parker for the first time today.

There's a school of thought that says that the human mind works by taking small amounts of data and twisting them through various rules or organizing principals and transforming something into a whole. Peter seemed to be split between two realities. In a weird way, she felt sort of sorry for him.

 

Everyone’s parents were waiting for them when the bus pulled into the parking lot. Most of them looked worse than their kids did. Michelle wasn’t surprised that her mother hadn’t shown up. She probably had no idea what had happened. She never paid any attention to the news unless aunt Anna told her too. 

 

Michelle tried to discreetly sneak past everyone while she made a move to the train, but Liz spotter her.

 

“Wait, your parents aren’t here yet?” She asked stopping Michelle.

 

“If they aren’t here by now then they aren’t going to show, it’s ok I'll just take the train.” Michelle insisted.

“Michelle, you really shouldn't be alone.” a voice from behind her said. She turned around to see May Parker with an arm still wrapped tightly around her nephew.

 

“Really, I’m fine. I was on the ground anyway…” She asserted but May still looked unconvinced.

 

The last thing she needed was people feeling sorry for her. Taking pity on the sad girl with the negligent mother. The only thing worse than being in pain is other people seeing you in it.

 

“Let me give you a ride home then, it’s on our way” May suggested while Peter nodded.

 

“Yeah, the train is just going to be filled with sleeping homeless people” Peter suggested.

 

“I like the sleeping homeless people, they don’t bother me.” She said to him with a pointed glare.

 

“At least let me call your aunt to pick you up,” May went on “I’ll worry all night if I just let you leave.”

 

“I can take her.” A new voice called from across the lot. Michelle turned around not believing her ears.

It was Gayle.

She looked different. Her hair was shorter and she looked as though she had put on a bit of weight. She seemed tired, but as she came closer Michelle realized that she had probably been crying for a while.

May was the first one to say anything.

“Gayle! It’s so nice to see you, you look great.”

“Thanks, May, you too,” Gayle replied. She seemed to be having as much trouble looking at Michelle as Michelle was. having to look at her. Why would she come? Michelle hadn’t heard a word from her in years and then she just shows up.

Liz gave Michelle another quick hug before her mother hurried her away. Michelle had wished she had stayed, she had no idea what to say to her sister who had been absent for her entire high school career.

Gayle and May made some small talk but it all sounded muddled to Michelle. She didn’t know how she should feel. She had spent so long convincing herself that she was better off without her, but now that she was here Michelle felt like a piece of her heart had slipped back into place.

May and Peter left after a few minutes leaving Gayle and Michelle alone together for the first time in years. Peter gave her a small wave as he was leaving so Michelle flipped him off in return.

The two of them stood there in awkward silence for a long time. Neither of them seemed sure of where to start when Gayle looked down at Michelle’s shirt and let out a small laugh.

“God, you're so pretentious.” She sighed.

Michelle looked down at her shirt. It was a picture of Sylvia Plath that she had always loved.

“It was a strategy, I wore it to psych out the other teams,” Michelle said defensively. She had also worn it because she adored Plath’s poetry, but she knew that Gayle would just mock her for it.

“Those blazers weren’t enough?” Gayle joked before asking seriously “Did it work?”

“Probably, we won.” Michelle shrugged looking at her shoes.

“Congratulations,” Gayle said dryly before adding softly, “You know it's ok to like things just because you like them.”

Michelle just stared ahead. What was she doing here? She had no right to walk out of her life like she had and then just pop up like nothing had happened.

“I saw what happened on the news,” Gayle confessed quietly.

Michelle stayed silent. The only reason Gayle was here was because she thought her little sister almost died and felt guilty. As far as Michelle was concerned her sister deserved to feel shitty for abandoning her.

“You must have been so scared-“ Gayle went on before Michelle cut her off.

“I was on the ground, so you really don’t have to pretend like you were worried about me” She snapped.

“I’m always worried about you,” Gayle said softly craning her head to try and look at Michelle’s face. “You are my little sister, and just because you and mom don’t want me in your lives anymore doesn’t mean that I’m not.”

Michelle lifted her head up to look her sister in her eyes. She was telling the truth, Gayle had always been the worst liar. But Michelle couldn’t understand how that could be when her sister’s actions said the opposite.

“Do you… wanna talk about it?” Gayle asked cautiously.

“I wasn’t even in the elevator, why does everyone think that I wouldn’t be ok?”

“Just because you weren’t the one in danger doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be scary for you too,” Gayle explained. “It must have been awful, I can’t even imagine how hopeless that must have been.”

Michelle hated that her sister knew her so well.

“It wasn't that bad,” Michelle lied “Spider-Man got there right away.”

“You all were lucky that he was there.” Said Gayle.

“I guess we were,” Michelle said looking back at her shoes. “Where’s your… offspring?” She asked coldly.

“Tim is at home with her. Her name is Sam,” Gayle explained. “I really hope that you will come to see her someday.”

“Really?” Michelle asked sarcastically.

“Yes, of course. I keep leaving messages with mom asking if you will come by some time but…” She must have noticed the surprised look on Michelle’s face because her tone went from soft and sweet to something much sharper. “She never told you did she.”

Michelle just shook her head, she couldn’t bear to look at her sister. For so long she had thought that Gayle had left without any thought to her mother or Michelle. She should have know better than to trust that. Her mother had stolen her away from her father without letting her say goodbye, of course, she would have tried to keep Gayle away too.

She didn’t know what to say, what words could possibly incomes the amount of regret she had was experiencing?

“So, Homecoming huh?” Gayle asked looking up at the banner tied to the fence. “You going?

“Why would I do that?” Michelle asked, grateful for a change in subject.

“You are the smartest person I have ever met. You don’t need school to teach you anything, except for social skills, which is exactly what school dances are for?” Gayle joked.

“What would I even do at a dance?” Michelle muttered.

“Dance?” Gayle said slowly.

“I really don’t see that happening.”Michelle insisted.

“OK, fine. then find a guy who's smart and sardonic like you and make fun of everyone else.” Gayle said with a smug grin,

“Who would I even go with? I hate everyone at this school.” Michelle argued.

“What about May’s nephew, Peter? You guys have known each other forever, he’s smart and cute.” Suggested Gayle.

“He’s short.” said Michelle. He was also a liar and dangerous but she didn’t need to explain that to her sister.

“So? If you're not dancing it doesn’t matter.” Gayle argued with a smile that made it seem like she knew more than she was saying,

“I don’t think that he’s interested in going with me...” Michelle explained, hoping that it was an answer her sister would accept.

“Well then forget him. I’m sure there are plenty of boys who would love to go with you.” Gayle gushed.

“That's just untrue,” Michelle said stoically.

“With those eyes? I’m sure you drive all the boys here crazy” Gayle insisted.

“I scare them. They think I’m a freak.” Michelle explained

“Boys are always scared to ask out the pretty girls. Go by yourself, look amazing, Let all the boys suffer, it’s good for your skin” suggested Gayle with a sly wink.

“Now you sound like mom.” Michelle said smugly watching her sisters face twist with abject horror,

“Take that back!” she yelled.

“Whatever, at least your not trying to blackmail me into going like mom would.” Michelle lamented.

“She would.” Agreed Gayle.

“I’m sure she will as soon as she finds out about homecoming” Michelle groaned burying her face in her hands.

“You know,” Gayle started softly, “If the worst thing in your life is mom forcing you to go to a dance then maybe things aren’t so bad.” 

“I could be trapped in an elevator waiting to fall to my death,” Michelle suggested. 

“That's the spirit.” Cheered her sister.

It amazed Michelle how easy it was to fall into rhythm with Gayle again. It almost felt like nothing had changed at all, but she knew that was just an illusion. Her  sister had a baby and a husband, her own family while Michelle had also changed. She had grown cynical in the years they had spent apart.

As much as she wanted to believe that everything could just go back to normal she accepted that it was impossible. She couldn’t turn back time, and even if she could, what would it really change.

She could feel something shifting in the air, a sort of change that she wasn’t sure she was ready for but couldn’t stop. One way or another, something was going to give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smash buttons if you dig it


	6. Tougher than Leather

Gayle dropped Michelle off in front of her building but wouldn’t dare go upstairs. It was easier for her to just leave with a promise that the two sisters would be in touch with each other. Michelle wanted to believe her but knew better than to count on anyone anymore. It kept her from being disappointed in them later on.

When she got upstairs her mother was passed out on the couch, the coffee table was littered with empty wine bottles and the only light in the room came from an infomercial playing on the television. Michelle wasn’t surprised. It was more or less the scene she had been expecting to see. She had hoped her mother had somehow heard the news and was worried that her daughter may have almost plunged to her death, but she knew better than that and so she couldn’t be disappointed.

Frank was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he was out for the night. Maybe he left for good again. Michelle found that she didn’t really care. He would show up again sooner or later, for better or worse.

The landline rang out while Michelle was beginning to clean up the various bottles and takeout counter that had accumulated over the weekend. She knew who it was before answering, Aunt Anna was the only one with the number. She only ever called it when Michelle’s mom let her phone died with looked highly likely probable the circumstances.

“Thank God!” Anna exclaimed as soon as Michelle answered the phone. “Your mother better be dead and dismembered, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine, and mom’s fine. She’s just tired.” Michelle said quietly. She didn’t want to lie but the last thing any of them needed was for Anna to get all worked up and start something. Michelle was exhausted enough as it was.

“Bullshit,” She spat back, “Sorry.” she apologized a moment later before announcing that she was coming over. Before Michelle could say anything the call was disconnected.

She glanced at the sate of the apartment and sighed. She began gleaning again with a bit more urgency. She may not appreciate her mother, but she understood that they were all that each other had left now. She knew that her mother may not understand her but she would also completely disassociate if she lost her other daughter.

Fifteen minutes later Anna was pounding on the door while her sister snored on the sofa. Michelle dragged her feet to unlock the door but was too slow for her aunt who had opened the door herself with her spare key.

“Madeline!” Anna shouted pushing in the door before seeing Michelle and pulling her into an uncomfortably tight hug.

Her mother remained undisturbed on the sofa which only seemed to enrage her sister. She stormed over and pushed and pulled at her until she fell off and landed on the floor. Only then did she even begin to stir but still wasn’t awake.

“Aunt Anna, just leave her. You can deal with this in the morning.” Michelle insisted

“Like hell we can!” She shouted before she slapped her sister hard across the face to no response. Michelle always forgot that she had a nasty temper herself considering she was such an advocate for nonviolent conflict resolution, then she would see her with her sister and remember that they had both grown up in the same house.

Anna had marched into the kitchen and found a half-empty pitcher of water which she carried back to her sisters snoozing body and dumped what was left in it over her head. Michelle’s mother shot up with a gasp. She looked about wildly looking furious until her eyes landed on her sister. She pounced up from the floor clawing at her but tripped over a blanket and fell back on the floor.

“What the hell Anna?” she growled.

“What the hell! Your daughter almost died today and your sinking yourself stupid” Anna spat back.

Michelle’s mother’s eyes suddenly lost all their fire. Her whole body softened as she fell back into a mess of limbs on the floor.

“I’m fine, I didn’t even go up there-” Michelle tried to protest but her aunt cut her off.

“That's not the point!” She snapped before turning back to her sister who still looked visibly shaken. “The point is, there was an incident that could have easily involved you diving horrifically and the 91 times I tried to call your mother to ask if she knew anything about if you were ok, or if you needed anything, all 91 times she was either too wasted or she was asleep.”

Michelle’s mother didn’t say anything, all she could do was look at the floor. Anna didn’t have any kids of her own, but for some reason, her sister had always looked to her for approval. She looked like a child that was being punished by her own mother.

“Where the fuck is Frank?”

“I think Michelle should stay with me for a week,” Anna added firmly.

“What?!?” Michelle shouted. Her aunt had made a few good points, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t figure it out. She had been gone all weekend, her mom had probably just forgotten to eat. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

But her mother didn’t seem like she had it in her to fight anyone and instead just nodded meekly and quietly told her to pack a bag.

Michelle furiously dumbed out her bag from her weekend trip and started throwing a week's worth of clothes back in the bag. She could understand why her aunt was upset, she was pretty irritated herself, but why did she have to leave now, in the middle of the night? All of this could easily wait until the morning.  
She could hear her aunt laying into her mother about responsibility and self-respect while her mother seemed to be making half-hearted excuses. Michelle hated when she got like this. She couldn’t stand up for herself or anyone. It reminded the woman she had been when they were still living with her father. She knew that her mother couldn’t have fought for her to stay, she wouldn’t have even known how, but a part of her still wished that she had.

She almost never saw Anna get like this, she was usually so calm and serene that it was obnoxious. Only her sister could get her to curse and spit and scream. It was almost like an alien symbiote had taken over her and transformed her into a rage monster.

Michelle wished she could have just gone to stay with Gayle. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed her. She hardly knew who she was anymore but anything would be better than getting dragged out of the apartment by Anna when she was like this. She would probably spend the whole night just bitching about her sister all night and then Michelle would never get to sleep.

Anna’s apartment was small but cultivated. She had an eccentric mix of African weaves hanging on the walls and hand-woven baskets. She had shelves lined with stone carvings from her travels through South America. When Michelle was a kid it had felt like the most exciting place in the world, but tonight it just felt like a prison.

“Are you hungry or anything?” Anna asked her. They hadn’t spoken slice they left her mother’s apartment.

“No,” Michelle answered. She wanted to go to sleep, to be alone, to let he mind turn off for a while.

"Do you want to talk about what happened?” Anna asked.

"I'm really tired, maybe some other time? It's really not that big of a deal…” Michelle said hoping her aunt would just leave her which she did after several more prying questions were asked that Michelle refused to answer.

When she was finally left alone Michelle realized that she had forgotten to pack up any books when she left her apartment. Her aunt only had magazines and crappy romance books around which was going to be a problem. How would she be able to escape her reality without epic battles, sweeping romance or grisly murders? Everything had become so complicated, she craved the security of fiction, story structure. Where actions have consequences and foreshadowing pay off.

She would just stop at the library tomorrow, but then she remembered everything that had happened with Valarie before she left. She couldn’t face her yet, she would just have even more to explain when she went back.

Michelle tried to make herself comfortable but it was more of a challenge than one might expect. There was a lingering smell of pot and the sulfur stench of Anna’s kombucha that lived in her pantry. Nothing like the stink of red wine and Franks foot powder that Michelle was used to.

Anna’s cat, a massive albino beast named Abner, was reluctant to surrender his place on the couch to Michelle. He hissed at her and paced the room ready to strike out at her is she decided to move too quickly.

The couch wasn't exactly a prize. It was threadbare and lumpy. The cushions had gone flat over the years and reeked of Abner.

Michelle thought she was tired enough to get past it but she found herself staring up at the ceiling hours later as sleep continued to elude her.

The place was blanketed in childhood memories of Peter. His Aunt and Uncle used to leave him with Anna when they went out. When Michelle’s mother left her father they had spent a year holed up on Anna’s sofa before getting a place of their own. Peter was the first friend Michelle made that year. He was the only friend she made that whole year. Truthfully, he was the first friend she ever had after her sister if you count that with Michelle didn’t.

When she and her mother moved out she and Peter had grown apart, gone to different schools. They saw each other around the neighborhood every now and then, but it was easy to forget how close they had been. But it was impossible to ignore while she was sitting in the same room they had built blanket forts in.

When Peter’s uncle died he and his aunt moved into a building just around the corner from Anna. She could see their apartment from the window next to the couch. A fact that she was keenly aware of as she tried to sleep on the said couch.

They had grown apart when they started school, but despite all the years that had passes Michelle couldn’t look around without seeing the ghosts of old blanket forts.

Michelle spent the night tossing and turning, painfully aware that the longer she stayed awake the less time she had to sleep. The anxiety continued mounting until the light began to break over Queens and birds began singing a sweet song that mocked Michelle as she accepted that there would be no rest for her.

She put the kettle on the stove and found her aunts stash of strong, imported black tea and a few mugs. She quickly got dressed, tied up her hair and brushed her teeth all before the water started to boil.

No one in their family drank coffee, her father did but Michelle never counted him. Her grandparents had never had it in the house so when her mother and sister were old enough to try it on their own they couldn't see the appeal. The taste was strong and bitter in a way that might have been appealing if anyone had bothered to make it well. This was long before the days of cappuccino culture and coffee was made quickly and poorly more often than not. It stained teeth, it gave people awful breath and, unlike tea, was capable of destroying a new linen dress in just one moment of clumsiness.

Michelle had grown up with tea, she had tried coffee on several occasions and in various circumstances but she never developed a taste for it.

The kettle screamed on the stovetop and Michelle poured the hot water into her mug hoping that it would help her tea steep quickly.

While she waited for her tea to cool down Anna wandered in wrapped in a terry cloth robe and looking much more like her regular serine self than she had been the night before.

“I heard the kettle, do you have time for me to take you out for breakfast?”

"Not really..." Michelle said glancing at her watch.

“Well, I don’t have any breakfast foods, you have to eat though right?”

“I can just grab a roll from the bodega-“

“No, I can figure something out.”

“I can just have toast.”

“I don’t have any bread”

“Really?” Michelle was shocked, what kind of person didn’t have bread? It wasn’t like Anna had a gluten intolerance.

“I have pie!” She exclaimed, “Pie for breakfast, am I a fun aunt or what?

"I don't think that's the best idea"

"Why not, most important meal of the day!"

"I don't think that applies when the main ingredient is sugar..."

"Are you a kid or what?” She asked placing a large slice of pie and a fork in front of Michelle.

Anna made herself a cup of tea and pulled out a small cedar box. She sat across from Michelle and took leafy green buds of marijuana out and began breaking them into finer pieces

Michelle found herself in a trance as she watched Anna’s long delicate fingers roll a thin paper around the ground green leaves in a smooth motion.

“Your mother will be fine,” Anna said after she lit the joint and took a long drag. “She just needs to get herself together. Until she does that home isn't a suitable environment for a kid.”

“Yes, this is a much healthier environment for me,” Michelle said gesturing to the joint that Anna was presently smoking.

“Hey, I’m still a productive member of society.” She said defensively before adding slowly, ”You know, if you wanted to skip school today I'm sure all your teachers would understand, going through a traumatic experience and all."

"I didn't go through anything, I just saw it from the ground and "

"Don't be dismissive, they say that witnessing a horrible experience it's just the same as experiencing it yourself. That's why it can be so traumatic when you see those videos of cops killing children in the streets. That stuff sticks in your mind all the same. Trauma is trauma"

"I have to go to school, I have a French test."

"I'm sure you could retake tomorrow"

"I want to go to school"

"Fine. Tougher than leather aren't you? Young, gifted and black, with the whole world waiting for you. I remember how that felt, never get old sweetheart. You'll always regret it."

She regretted not taking her aunt up on her offer when she got to Midtown. Spider-Mania had taken the whole school by storm. Everyone wanted to know everything about what had gone down in DC.

She thought Spider-Man had been a hot topic the week before, but now she had become a full-on phenomenon. He was all anyone could talk about. Michelle figured it was for a good enough reason considering how he saved all her teammates, but no one seemed to care about what caused the explosion in the first place. The mania around Peter Parker’s second life felt like a distraction from the really dangerous thing that happened before Spider-Man showed up.

Peter looked like he was enjoying every moment of it. Michelle had never really considered Peter to be truly obnoxious before. He had his moments but he was no Flash Thompson. But if things kept going like this than Peter would be completely insufferable by the end of the week.

By the time she got to Gym she was ready to put a much space as possible between herself and Peter. His existence alone was giving her a headache.

Since she still was without any books she had nothing to hide behind. She felt sort of naked without having that physical barrier between herself and the rest of the world. The sensation was only heightened when Liz noticed her sitting on the bleachers and started making her way to the gym to join her

"Hey Liz," Michelle said when she sat next to her.

"Hey" She looked as tired as Michelle felt.

"You ok?"

"I don't really know…" She said. Michelle could understand. How do you go back to your day to day life after you almost fall to your death?

“Do you know Seymour?” She asked gesturing to her friend Betty Brant and another small dark haired boy who had followed Liz to the bleachers.

Michelle shook her head and turned to introduce herself the who why staring at her oddly.

“Hi, I’m -“

“Yeah, I know who you are” He cut in rolling his eyes. “I know who everyone is”

“Could you be any creepier when you say that?” Betty mumbled by Seymour ignored her.

“You have the highest IQ in the sophomore class, but your gap doesn’t even crack the top ten,” he said with a wicked grin confusing Michelle. How could he possibly know that? Why was he judging her? He just met her.

He went on adding slyly “Its that whole effortless lazy-genius, too-cool-for-school vibe. It's very cool, very D.F.W”

“David Foster Wallace committed suicide…..” Michelle added slowly trying to understand what that kid was talking about.

“Ignore any problematic connotations and just take the compliment,” Said Betty, “he doesn’t give them often.”

“Seymour works in the records office and exploits his position because he’s a nosey little ass,” Liz explained to Michelle.

“I wouldn’t say exploit, I consider it capitalizing on valuable information about my peers. You never know when you may need to know someone deep dark secrets.”

Michelle wondered what deep dark secrets could possibly be hiding in a high school records office but didn’t care enough to ask.

While Coach Wilson got decided the rest of the class into teams to play basketball Liz’s friend’s settled in around Michelle. It was strange to her. She wasn’t exactly social, she had never gossiped before. But since she didn’t have any books with her today and she would sooner drop dead than play basketball she just decided to try and roll with it. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.

“So Michelle, whats your deal? What are your plans for the future?” Betty asked.

Maybe Michelle was wrong.

“Guys, be nice,” Liz warned.

“What? It’s just a question,” said Betty innocently.

“I dunno, I guess I haven’t really thought about it,” Michelle said shrugging

“You mean like, you don’t know what school you want to go to?”

“I don’t even know if I want to go to college”

“Oh! So you’ed like travel. I could totally see that.”

“Maybe”

“But what would you do? Write? Import Exporting? Journalism?” Asked Betty.

“Probably a bit of all everything if I can. I don’t know, I’ll figure it out when I have too.”

“How can you be so blasé about your future?” Liz asked sincerely.

Michelle shrugged, “I dunno. Life is unpredictable if you make plans you’re only setting yourself up to be disappointed. So why worry about things that might happen.”

“Oh. My. God. That is like, so deep and so true.” Seymour gushed “You are amazing, I love you. I want an app that is just you telling me to pull my shit together a thousand different ways.”

“I don’t know if that's what apps are for…”

Suddenly there was a loud crashing noise, they all looked up to see that Peter had apparently tripped and fallen on his face

The whole gym erupted into laughter, even Liz was snickering next to Michelle. She didn't find it funny, partially because she had never found a person falling on their face to ever be particularly amusing, but also because she knew it was all an act. If he wanted to Peter could have easily destroyed the entire class but instead, he put on this show of being some sad pathetic dork.

"Smooth move, Penis Parker!" Flash hollered which got another wave of laughter from the class.

“Stop laughing! Flash is obnoxious enough without you encouraging him” Michelle suddenly found herself calling across the gym which seemed to bring everyone back to their senses.

Michelle could feel Peter's eyes on her, probably trying to say thank you with his big brown eyes but she refused to look at him.

She hadn't done it for him, she had done it for the good of the school. She imagined Flash's ego growing into some horrifying Cronenberg monster that would live off of the adoration of his classmates and she wouldn't let it be said that she just stood by and let that happen and tried to stop the blood rushing into her cheeks.

Liz insisted that Michelle join her at lunch, which she begrudgingly agreed to, but only because she still didn’t have any books to hide behind.

She made herself a cup of tea and found her way to their table. When she sat down Seymour gave her a huge grin. Betty was talking a mile a minute to Liz who was listening to her intently.

“It’s like, he can’t take a hint. I’ve been telling him for months that I’m not interested in him but he won’t just leave me alone.” She ranted.

“Maybe because you keep leading him on?” Seymour teased.

Betty’s jaw hit the floor, “I do not!”

“Well, you did make out with him at my party…” Liz suggested tentatively.

“So? That doesn’t mean anything. Why is Jason so Deseret to put a label on it? I hate labels?”

Michelle hated this conversation.

"What are you talking about? your practically a label maker” Seymour joked.

“Not funny!” Betty fumed smacking him in the head.

“Screw you, I’m hilarious,” Seymour said sticking his tongue out at her.

“Speaking of stalkers, Parker is starring again,” Seymour said with a wicked grin.

“Guys, don’t make fun of him, he’s nice” Liz pleaded.

“Sure, nice and completely obsessed with you. If you're not careful he might go all nutty on you.”

“Maybe he’s just staring at all of us because Michelle sat here instead of with him today.”

Everyone at the table seemed to think that had been a joke kept for Michelle and Liz. Liz was furious but Michelle was just embarrassed. Peter hardly noticed when she sat with him, she knew he wouldn’t care if she didn’t. She told herself she didn’t care but she couldn’t fight the urge to look back.

There he was, with his big brown eyes looking like a stupid sad puppy waiting to be acknowledged. Michelle almost felt sorry for him, until she remembered that he didn’t really deserve it. The praise that he was getting for his secret identity was more than enough to feed the egos of both personalities.

“I just realized I don’t care” Betty cut in taking the words right out of Michelle’s mouth.

“Yeah, why are we talking about Parker when we could be talking about Spider-Man?”

It took all of Michelle’s strength not to grin at the irony.

“Come on Liz, tell us everything!”

“Seriously, there are only, like, three decent pictures of him online and the only one that's in focus is of him coming out of the toilet.”

“We were trying to find something decent to use for the morning announcements but he moved too fast. all the news outlets are offering big money for decent pictures of him now.” Said Betty.

“So… was he tall?” Seymour asked.

“Did he say anything?” Betty added.

“Yeah, of course, he said stuff,” Said Liz rolling her eyes, “He had an accent, like a really thick accent from the Bronx.”

Michelle couldn’t help but snort into her tea at that which got everyone at the table’s attention.

“Sorry… That just wasn’t what I would have expected.” She explained.

“Did you see him from outside, climbing the monument?” Liz asked her.

“Yeah, I was right there. He even told me not to worry but I didn’t hear any accent, he was just talking to himself” Michelle said fiddling with the sting of her tea bag.

“Really?” Betty asked surprised.

“Yeah, I might have thought it was weird but he was in the process of saving everyone's life so I guess I just slipped my mind,” Michelle said, slowly processing it herself.

Peter’s suit must have some Tony Stark-patented AI system. That was how he knew which window to break. Something about it felt a little weird to her. Why was Stark loading Peter with all this high-tech gear? Was he trying of fashion Peter into some kind of Iron Man Jr?

Peter was a good person at his core, Michelle knew that everyone did, she just hoped that that wouldn’t change. If someone had to be Spider-Man better it be a good person like Peter and not just another arrogant know-it-all like Tony Stark.

Michelle resolved herself to push Peter and his spandex counterpart out of her mind. She wasn’t very successful but she managed to get through her French test without any problems. She spent so much time focusing not thinking about Peter that she didn’t consider what she would do when the final bell rang.

She couldn’t go back to the library and face Valerie yet, there was no decathlon practice this week. She didn’t even know where she would start. She wasn’t exactly eager to run back to her aunt’s couch and rude cat. She could go back to her mom’s apartment, but that would come with all sorts of other baggage that she wasn't equipped to deal with.

She was wondering the nearly abandoned halls when she passed by he freshman history room where detention was being held. She had spent a semester last year sketching kids in detention. It was a perfect place to find people holding looks of expressive despondency for extended periods of time. She had dropped art at the begging of the year and hadn’t felt inclined to go back until just now.

She told herself there were worse ways to spend an afternoon. She told herself self she was only sliding into one of the seats for a lack of any better place for her to go. She told herself everything she needed to dismiss the idea that it had anything to do with Peter Parker fuming in the seat in front of her.

Figuring out that Peter was living a double life as the friendly neighborhood web-slinger may have been the best thing that could have happened to Michelle. When she thought back at the complete wreck she had been just a few days before when she hadn’t put the pieces together she couldn’t help but think that she had dodged a bullet.

He wasn’t a perfect, he was a moron who was probably going to get himself killed. Michelle deserved better than that, and a guy that was as reckless as that didn’t deserve her. She was thankful that she had seen who the real Peter Parker. Michelle had probably saved herself a lot of pain by figuring out it when she did.

Last week she might have felt sorry for Peter, moping and stuck in detention even though he absolutely deserved to be there. He was being stupid and childish, which would have been completely pathetic if high school wasn't built on kids being stupid and childish.

Maybe she was holding him to too high a standard. But someone had to. His uncle had always been that person before and it seemed clear to her that Peter had forgotten that.

Coach Wilson dragged in an A/V unit to the front of the room and pressed play before collapsing into his desk chair without even bothering to take role. Peter couldn’t stop fidgeting as Captain America came on screen to have an old-fashioned talking to about following the rules with a few dad jokes thrown in while Michelle began sketching the look of utter despondency on Coach Wilson’s face.

Peter sprang out and ran out before the video even finished. Michelle watched him leave knowing he was about to suit up and do something stupid and dangerous and there was nothing that she or Coach Wilson could do to stop him.

She spent the next hour doodling happy to finally find something that helped her escape that wasn’t fictional until everyone was dismissed and she had to leave.

As she was packing up her books she heard a group of kid stubble loudly out of chess club. Michelle poked her head around her locker and saw they were all gathered around the smallest boys phone.

“Tiny, what are we even supposed to be watching?” She heard one of them say.

“Yeah, you said something about Spider-Man!” Said another.

“Just hold on…” Tiny argued as they all got very quiet before suddenly letting out a collective gasp.

“What was that?”

“What happening now? Holly Shit!”

“Did the whole Ferry split in half?”

“There’s Spider-Man!”

“How did he get out there? you can’t really swing onto a boat. Do you think he can fly?”

“Holy crap, he’s strong”

“Was that Iron Man?”

“Holly shit this is so cool.”

“Is that it?”

“Play it again!”

“Whats going on?” Michelle finally cut in, causing them to all jump.

“It’s- uh- Its-its-its” The biggest one stammered in terror.

“New Star Wars trailer?” She asked sarcastically.

“No, it’s the Spider-Man and Iron Man.” Tiny answered “They teamed up and saved a boat of people”

“That's what they do”

Tiny shrugged. “Yeah but it’s still cool.”

Michelle dug out her phone from the bottom of her bag and opened Twitter. There were all sorts of videos and pictures of what happened from various people that had been on the ferry. Michelle found herself consuming everything she could find as quickly as they were coming as she rode the train back to her aunt's building.

She couldn’t understand what Peter had been thinking. He left detention, probably getting himself suspended, all so he could jump in the middle of an F.B.I. investigation and ruin the whole sting.

He was being cocky and reckless and almost got a lot of people killed. Just because he had superpowers and a fancy suit that Tony Stark gave him didn't make him invincible. It was like he stopped using his brain before he jumped into action.

It didn’t help that he had people like Tony Stark bailing him out. She imagined that he had given him a nice pat on the back for being there to save the day even though, as far as Michelle could tell, Peter was kind of responsible for the ferry getting split in two as the weapons he was looking for.

The quick video of Spider-Man trying to stop the weapon that had done all the damage had been circulating like crazy and was playing on Anna’s tv when Michelle came in.

It didn’t look good. He looked like a bumbling kid that had no idea what he was doing. Michelle already knew this, but that was only because she knew who was under the mask. The whole city had been pretty hot and cold on Spider-Man from the start, this mistake would probably destroy all the goodwill he had earned in Washington.

Anna was watching the news intently while Abner used his considerable mass to fill the rest of the sofa. She was livid, this was exactly the kind of thing she was always warning was bound got happen.

“Its the killer robots all over again,” She said when she noticed that Michelle had come in, “No regard for anyone but themselves and their agenda. I’ve been saying it for years, we are heading right into a kratocracy. Just you wait.”

Michelle just nodded, there was no use trying to argue any nuances of the situation with her. Anna was stubborn and had made up her mind about the Avengers and anyone else like them.

Michelle’s phone started rigging in her hand. She looked down and saw it was a number she didn’t recognize. She was tempted to just send it to voicemail, but something in her gut told her not to.

“Hello?”

“Hi Michelle, this is May Parker” a panicked voice came through the speaker. Michelle decided to take the call in the bathroom, away from her aunt’s raving.

“Hi May, whats going on?” Michelle asked slowly thinking of the hundreds of pictures she had just seen of Peter holding two halves of a ferry together with his weird webbing.

“Have you seen Peter? He isn't answering my calls and I was starting to get worried, now there’s this ferry thing and I'm really starting to worry. I tried calling Ned but he didn’t know where he was” May’s voice was strained and breathy. She sounded like she was in the middle of a panic attack.

“I haven’t seen him since detention this afternoon,” Michelle answered.

“Peter had detention?” May asked

“Yeah…” Michelle said slowly realizing she had probably gotten Peter into even more trouble than he was already in.

“Do you know why he had detention?” May asked.

“Probably for sneaking out of the hotel in Washington,” Michelle answered without thinking. She slammed her head against the wall.

“He snuck out of the hotel?” May asked sounding panicked. What was wrong with her, had she forgotten how to say ‘I don’t know’?

“….I don’t know” Michelle answered still feeling like a traitor.

“Why didn’t the school tell me about this?” May asked.

“I don’t know.” Said Michelle, which was true.

“So detention still would have gotten out by now-“

“he left early,” Michelle said before mentally smoking herself. Maybe she was subconsciously trying to get better shipped off to boarding school and out of her head

“What? To go where?” May asked.

“I don’t know.” she said although it was pretty obvious where he had gone.

“Well Michelle, forgive me, you’re sending me some mixed messages. do you know whats going on or not?” May asked her pointedly, but Michelle could tell it was just because she was terrified.

“I don’t” She lied.

“I’m sorry sweetie, I’m just so worried.” May cried apologetically.

“I’m sure he's fine. He’s just a moron.” At least that part was true.

“If you hear from him let me know ok?”

“Sure”

“Tell your Aunt I said hello.”

“Sure”

Michelle heard the line disconnect but stood there with her forehead against the wall and her phone against her ear until she could bear to face herself.

She couldn’t believe she had ratted on Peter like that. She was surprised she didn’t also throw into May that Peter was Spider-Man. She felt like garbage, Peter absolutely deserved to be grounded but she never wanted to be the reason why.

She pulled out her books and began working on her homework while her aunt remained fixated on the news. Every now and then she would yell or scoff at the television. When Michelle finished her work she managed to reclaim a small bit of sofa from Abner to see if there was anything else going on in the world other than Spider-Man.

There wasn't it seemed. There were currently two red-faced white men arguing about Tony Stark’s roll in what had happened.

 _“I just want to know who he is! Is the Spider-Man independent of the Avengers? Is he an employee of Tony Stark? Who is he working for and what is his agenda?”_ One of them was yelling.

 _“The Spider-Man is putting himself at risk to try and save lives, why does it matter who he takes his orders from?”_ The other shot back

_“It matters if the person who is giving those orders is a trigger-happy weapons manufacturer whos only drive is his unbridled greed!”_

“Preach!” Anna yelled from the seat next to her.

_“Now Stark shut down all manufacturing operations years ago..”_

Michelle couldn’t take it. It was just noise. None of them knew the first thing about who Spider-Man really was. If they did they would probably be a lot more concerned.

She turned her attention out the window, watching lights pop on in various windows in the distance until she noticed a very nice car pull up to Peter’s building.

Michelle saw him climb out of the back seat wearing an enormous tee shirt and a pair of pink pajama pants. He looked devastated and Michelle realized that Tony Stark must have been just as upset with Peter as she had been. He had taken his suit back, Peter broke the rules or crossed a line and now he was actually dealing with those consequences.

It might seem harsh, but maybe it was exactly what Peter needed. He was lucky to be alive after what happened that afternoon, so was everyone else on that boat. Hopefully, he would get some perspective from this experience.

At some point, Anna snapped out of her CNN induced trance and relaxed they needed to eat. She had missed the window to cook something decided to order Indian food. Michelle volunteered to pick it up. She had to get away from the spider-discourse.

She walked around the corner to her aunt’s Indian place. It wasn’t hers, she always went to a place near her mom's building that had the best veggie samosas in all five boroughs. She placed her order and found an empty table to wait at when the bell above the door rang.

Michell looked up and saw none other than Peter Parker pulling his hood off. He gave Michelle an award smile and wave when he saw her before heading g up to the counter to place an order of his own.

“Do you mind if I...?” Peter asked her pointing to the chair across from her.

“Go ahead,” Michelle said pushing the chair out from the table with her foot.

Peter sank into the chair with a heavy sigh. He looked awful.

“So how did truancy suit you?” Michelle asked him with a smirk.

“That's funny,” Said Peter with a sour grin.

"They might suspend you for that you know” Michelle added more seriously.

"That thought didn't occur to me at the time” Peter sighed.

"Not very smart.”

"No, it wasn’t."

They fell into a comfortable silence while they waited. The smell of curry and ambient music felt like a blanket insulating them from all the crap going on outside.

“What are you doing here?” Peter asked out of nowhere, Michelle looked up at him confused. “I just mean, I thought you liked Punjabi Dhabha on Skillman? Their closer to your building.”

“I’m staying with my Aunt this week,” Michelle told him with a small shrug

“Hows that going?” he asked.

“The cat wants me dead and we had pie for breakfast.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad, not the cat wanting you dead part, but pie is good.”

“It’s one of those things that sounds better in concept than practice,” She said cringing.

“So why are you staying with your aunt?” Peter asked.

“So my mom can either sober up or go on a bender”

A long awkward silence fell between them which Michelle found a bit odd, it wasn't like her family is dysfunctional was a secret. Everyone in the borough knew about it to some extent or another.

“Are you ok?” Peter asked.

“I’m fine,” Michelle's said, not looking at him.

“You want to talk about it?” He asked.

“No,” Michelle answered honestly. She was sure he would get some version of the story from his Aunt later anyway. “So what was so important you had to ditch detention?” She deflected.

“You ever have one of those days when you try to do the right thing, but then something happens and everything goes south and everything you do just makes it worse?”

“I once volunteered to be Flashes partner on a French project? Like that?”

“Yeah, only I messed it up really bad and I lost the Stark Internship because of it.”

“I’m sorry”

“Order Up!” the man behind the counter held a bag out to Michelle.

“That's me,” Michelle said awkwardly leaving to grab her food. Before she left she turned back to Peter.

“Hey, dork.” “If Stark couldn’t see what he had with you, then it's not worth it. You don’t need him. One day he’s gonna see what your gonna do and he’s gonna be so mad that he let you get away.”

Peter looked back at her surprised. “Thanks,” he said with a sad, crooked smile.

“Order Up! Mr. Parker and I threw in a little gulab jamun for your lovely aunt. Send her my best yeah?” The host said with a wiry grin.

“Ok, um, thanks,” Peter mumbled awkwardly as he walked away.

“That guy wants to bang your aunt,” Michelle told him once they walked outside.

“He can get in line behind every other guy in Queens” Peter scoffed.

“Do you think she’ll ever find someone else?” Michelle asked, she didn’t realize how personal the question might have been until it was out of her mouth, but Peter didn’t seem to notice.

“I hope so. She deserves to be happy, I dunno if she’ll be ready for anything even remotely romantic for a while.”

"Well, maybe sooner than you think if that gulab jamun is any good.” Michelle joked.

Peter actually laughed at that and Michelle felt her stomach flop over. This was the Peter she knew, the one that made her skin hot and her heart beat out of rhythm.

She knew better than to believe that he would let Stark stand in his way, he had a practically indomitable will that wouldn't keep him on the bench for long, but part of Michelle hoped that it would. He was still Peter Parker under that mask. A 15-year-old kid who had taken on for more responsibility than anyone his age should or could but at his core was a good person. He was kind and generous. Those were the things that made him remarkable even with all his powers.

He needed someone in his life to save him from himself at times. Someone like Tony, or even Michelle. Anyone who could call him on his bullshit and keep him from getting stupid again. Spider-Man may be heroic, but it was still Peter under that mask, and he might not realize it yet, but he couldn't save the world on his own.


	7. Hard Feelings

The rest of the week felt like one of the longest of Michelle’s life. Her pride and stubbornness about seeing Valerie again had mutated into a deep shame and embarrassment. She knew she had been acting childish and Valarie wouldn’t hesitate to call her out. She had tried a few other local public library options, but they all felt off. Either they were dark windowless chambers or they were sprawling historical landmarks that, while striking, made Michelle feel deeply out of place.

 

The lack of literature had forced Michelle to fully engaging with her surroundings in excruciating detail. It was all so unbearably dull. She couldn’t understand how everyone else seemed to be so easily entertained by their day to day monotony.

Her boredom was making her mean. She was typically a pretty salty person, but this week she had been outright rude. She might not have minded as much if she hadn’t also been spending more time with Liz and her friends. She had very little in common with them and found very little of what they discussed to be interesting but they could be entertaining and helped pass the time.

Unfortunately with Homecoming that Friday Liz and Betty had their hands full. Liz had thrown herself into the various spirit week activities that the school had organized that was meant to energize the school spirit on campus in anticipation for the big football game that weekend which all seemed pointless to Michelle. A science and technology school with a world-renowned robotics lab didn’t lend itself to having a successful football team. Nothing about concussions was cool at Midtown.

The rest of the school didn’t see it that way, so Michelle was forced to endure as the rest of the school decorated their lockers and decked themselves out in blue and gold. Everything had reached a fever pitch by Friday’s pep rally.

The whole school was crammed into the gymnasium’s bleachers to cheer on Midtown’s own unusually underwhelming Tigers on as they took on whatever team would undoubtedly win the game by a mile. No one seemed to care about that though. The stands were packed with kids all proudly rocking school colors. The whole gym was buzzing with an excited energy. Michelle sighed deeply at the sight of it all and made her way to the back of the sophomore section.

The gym was decided up by class, so Liz was sitting across the gym with the seniors, while Betty and Seymour were sitting in the front row of the junior bleachers next to the sophomores. Michelle had never really cared. She just sat as far back and close to the exit as was possible no matter where what section tradition dictated she fall into.

Michelle didn’t really know what was involved in a pep rally. She had been to several, attendance was required, however, she had never paid them any attention. She kept her nose buried deep in one book or another and was able to zone out all of the noise. This wouldn’t be like that though. She was stuck without any supplementary reading material which was likely to drive her insane.

She couldn’t imagine the idea of actually watching a genuine pep rally, whatever it was, but was lacking in the way of a distraction. She considered drawing, everyone here was far more cheerful than her preferred subjects but she couldn’t be picky. She imagined that it would be hard to find anyone that would be sitting still in the gymnasium long enough for her to get a proper likeness of them on paper, but seeing as she had no better options she figured she might as well try.

Michelle dug her weathered sketchbook out of her bag and opened it to the last page she had been working on. It was a drawing of Peter sulking she had done in detention the day before.

It hadn’t been her intention to hang out in detention after school every day but she had to be somewhere. She couldn’t go back to the library because she was currently experimenting with spinelessness and she couldn’t stand to be at Anna’s apartment any longer than she had to.

Anna was a passionate person, she was also a preachy person, with made it impossible to focus on anything but her when she got worked up about something, and she got worked up about everything. Abner had declared war and had taken to pouncing on her in the middle of the night in an effort to regain his place on the couch. The apartment almost never had any food in it other than a jar of peanut butter that was, unfortunately, smooth. Thankfully it would all be over on Saturday when she could go home where her bed lived and Anna’s cat didn’t.

It wasn’t all bad, there were always Nina Simone records playing when she came in and Anna was used to a much higher quality of take-out than Michelle was, but it wasn't home. For all her mother's mistakes, and there were many, she had still managed to give her sister and her some start of a new beginning after she left there father. She could see why some people might not understand but they also hadn’t seen the broken woman that her mother was just a few years ago.

She and her sister weren’t all that different from each other as much as they tied to distinguish themselves from the other. They were both snobs for no reason, they both relied on other people opinions of them to determine their self-worth, they both nagged Michelle relentlessly about her appearance, abet for entirely different reasons. They were both noisy and stubborn and each had an unhealthy preoccupation with Michelle’s social activities.

Michelle’s mother had come to terms with her daughter's anti-social behavior years ago but vocally disproved in her own sardonic whenever Michelle gave her an opportunity. Anna, however, was faced herself some kind of unlicensed consoler and had been trying to pry into every detail of Michelle’s day to day life. Michelle would rather deal with Frank getting pasted on the roof and howling at the moon.

Detention was sort of social, in horrifically depressing sort of way that Anna tried to embrace but clearly didn’t understand, probably because it was the kind of thing that would make Betty gasp in horror as Michelle had seen her do several times over the past few days. Detention was boring but it was also simple, convenient and safe compared to every other place in Queens. Michelle imagined there was no safer place in all of New York City than sitting next to a moping off-duty Spider-Man.

Peter put on a happy face with his teachers and Ned but it was clear the guilt about the whole ferry incident was destroying him. Michelle knew that she was constantly fighting with himself about finding some fight to jump into and prove himself and staying down because that sort of thing is what got him in all this trouble. The struggle was constant with him, it was written all over his face.

His web-slinging counterparts absence had not gone unnoticed. #SpiderWatch had been trending locally for a minute but died out when people kept posting pictures of random people jogging in lycra pants. DailyBugle had posted a story with ludicrous theories trying to explain his disappearance under the headline SPIDER-MAN SQUASHED? Peter may have been acting like nothing had happened but Michelle had noticed that he hardly said three words after that story went viral.

It had just been the two of them in detention that day, and seeing that Coach Wilson was convinced that she was drawing him in a sort of voodoo ritual, the only person left in crisis to sketch was Peter.

There was no better subject that Michelle could have imagined. He had an amazing jawline. never moved, but she had been avoiding drawing him all week. It seemed like she would just be setting herself up for trouble. She told herself it wasn’t a big deal as she outlined the shape of his brow and lie line of his jaw. She told herself she was giving this drawing more time and detail than she typically might have because there was no one else here to draw and Peter never moved in detention. Michelle told herself all kinds of things and listened to none of them.

Michelle was suddenly pulled out of her thoughts by the unmistakable sensation that she was no longer going unnoticed realizing she was still sitting in in the crowded gymnasium and Cindy Moon was heading straight towards her with Abraham, Flash and Charles close behind them.

She realized she had her sketchbook open to the drawing of Peter and quickly snapped her sketchbook shut hoping that no one had noticed.

“Hey there Shelly!” Flash said with a smug grin as he and Charles sat themselves down right in front of her.

“Whatcha working on?” Charles asked trying to grab the book from her knees when Michelle snatched it back ready to smack him across the jaw with it.

“Honestly, that's just such an invasion of privacy, what the hell!” Cindy said sitting next to Michelle bouncing her empty water bottle off the top of his head.

“What kind of secrets are you hiding anyway?” Flash asked eyeing her suspiciously. “You’re not so sort of secret fashion superstar or something that gonna ‘she’s all that’ us a homecoming are you? Or are you also working for Spider-Man like Penis Parker?”

“If I told you I’d have to kill you,” Michelle sighed before deciding to mess with flash just a little bit more. “Wait so, you don’t know who Spider-Man is yet?”

“Like you do,” Flash shot back but Michelle could see the panic in his eyes.

“Yeah, of course. It's so basic. I figured if Peter could figure it out then you probably would have too.” Michelle said smoothly watching him squirm.

She could feel Cindy sickening next to her and Michelle jabbed her in the ribs a little harder than she meant to, but she was about to give away the whole game.

Flash looked like he was malfunctioning trying to figure out what it was that they knew that the didn't when suddenly the marching band filed onto the court drowning out any conspires that Flash might have been able to piece together.

It was funny to mess with idiots like Flash but Michelle figured it was probably just her subconscious way of testing the waters to see if anyone else had been able to figure it out. It was so painfully obvious at this point it was embarrassing that a school that only accepted students with a 135 IQ or hadn’t noticed they went to school with a part-time Avenger.

Michelle scanned over the rest on the gymnasium, she could see Betty and Jason filming students in the bleachers, or rather she saw Betty yelling at Jason who seemed to be having the time of his life behind the camera. Beyond them, she could see Liz in the first row of seats in the senior section chatting with her friends.

Michelle wondered if they were her real friends or just people she was stuck with like Michelle was stuck with Flash and Cindy.

Peter and Ned had found seats a few rows in front of them. He looked sullen, he always looked sullen these days. It didn’t suit him. Peter never sulked, even after his uncle was killed, he seemed withdrawn and angry, but it never seemed to bury him. Michelle felt the smallest pinch of sympathy for him before dismissing it. If she was going to be the kind of girl who pined she would have to find someone more deserving than Peter Parker.

The Pep Rally itself was low on pep and rallied nothing. The highlight of the whole event was watching the tiger mascot fall on his face after trying to make a slam dunk from a trampoline. No one else seemed to mind the slog. They all got to skip class for this and enjoy Flash's uninspired commentary. Michelle could never understand how so many people seemed to mistake his arrogant bravado for wit.

When it was finally over and the student body all began filing out of the exit Michelle found herself stuck with Cindy and Abe as the crowd pushed them together. Michelle felt like a third wheel, only an even weirder one because the other two had no idea they were a bicycle.

“Hey, guys!” Sally said pushing past a few people. She was a Junior so she sat in her own section.

“Excited for the dance?” She asked and any awkwardness that might have been dissipated by her article came back tenfold. Abe was blushing and stammering while Cindy was uncharacteristically quiet and had taken a great interest in the gym floor.

“I wasn’t planning on going,” Michelle said impassively.

“Oh but you have too!” Sally cried, “I’m trying to get a whole group of us together.”

Cindy and Abe looked at each other coils at the mention of a group.

“That sounds great!” Beamed Cindy while Abraham nodded.

“Great!” Sally smiled before the three of them turned to Michelle looking at her expectantly.

“What?”

“Will you at least consider it?” Sally begged.

“Why?” Michelle asked.

“Please?”

“I’ll think about it.” Michelle lied. If Liz couldn’t get her to go to Homecoming than there was no way Sally or Cindy would.

The rest of the day went by like any other. Michelle sat at her old seat in the cafeteria with Peter and Ned since Liz was busy decorating the gym for the dance. At some point, Michelle realized that it was the closest thing to a normal day she had had in what felt like years. It was an odd sensation considering everything that had happened over the past few weeks.

After school, she drifted into the gymnasium to help Liz Finnish decorating before everyone ran off to get dressed for the dance.

Most of the gym had been set up during lunch period but Liz had mentioned that the chairs and tables couldn't be delivered until their fifth period. Michelle knew Liz would be feeling pressed for time to get the gym and herself ready for the dance so she decided to help out.

She wasn’t in any rush to get home, and there was no detention on account of the dance and game.

When she walked in she was impressed by everything that Liz had managed to get done already. There were colorful lights and ballot wreaths. It was still a gymnasium but if she Squinted Michelle could almost be fooled that it was a more expensive gymnasium.

Cindy and Liz were unpacking small lamps from there own small boxes across the gym, Liz spotted Michelle and waved between chucking on a box over her shoulder and opening another.

Michelle found a box of linens and got to work draping them over the tables and she noticed Seymour was draping sparkling streamers throughout the gym with the sort of enthusiasm that Michelle thought reinforced a gross number of stereotypes.

“Can you pull this all back a little?” Liz called to him.

“Not possible. This is an 80’s dance if it doesn’t look like it was decorated by coke addicts then whats even the point?” Seymour said while throwing out tinsel by the fistful.

“So Liz,” Betty called to her from across the gym “do you still want to tag along with me and Jason or-“

“Actually, Peter asked me to go with him earlier today…” Liz said blushing.

“And you said yes?” Betty snapped.

“Yeah, why wouldn't I?”

“I - I’m sorry, I’m just confessed, I didn't think that you liked him, like,  _liked him_  liked him…" Betty stuttered.

“Well, Maybe I do.” Liz shrugged.

"Why wouldn't you tell me,” Betty asked

“Because I knew you would make a thing of it,” said Liz.

"I would not!” Betty yelped defensively.

"You are. Right now.” Liz shot back.

"Only because you didn't tell me!” Betty reasoned but also sounding defensive.

Michelle was frozen. He feet were nailed to the floor. She felt both rigid and fragile, like everything under her skin had been gutted out leaving her a shell that would shatter into ashes at any moment.

“MJ!”

Michelle's head snapped up to see Liz looking at her concerned.

“Are you ok?” She asked.

“Sorry, I was just remembering something…” Michelle lied unconvincingly.

She couldn’t explain why her body had such an extreme physical reaction to what Liz had told them. She had buried her feelings when she figured out who Peter Parker was when he wasn’t Peter Parker. She knew that there was some residual attraction that she had attributed to hormones, but it shouldn’t have been the sort of thing that could make her whole body turn cold.

“I’m sorry Liz, I have to go. I just remembered I need to grab something from the library if I’m going to make it to the dance tonight.” Michelle said as she quickly found her backpack and rushing towards the door.

“So you’re coming?” She heard Liz call out. Michelle spin on her heel to see Liz looking ecstatic at this development.

“Yeah.” She decided. “Yeah, I’ll see you there. Or here. I’ll see you later.” She rambled as she pushed open the gym doors.

She knew she shouldn’t care that Peter had asked out Liz. Her brain didn’t care at all, and yet she was overwhelmed by an all-encompassing disappointment that echoed through her bones. She shouldn’t be feeling this way. She had always known how Peter felt about Liz. He looked at her like she moved in slow motion. This was expected and still, it caught her off-guard leaving her winded.

She couldn’t stand these groundswells of emotion tied to Peter that swollen her whole. Love was dangerous. All it ever seemed to do was destroy people leaving nothing but chaos and pain in its wake. Michelle knew she wasn’t really in love with Peter, she was obsessed with him but it was nothing more than a fixation.

Michelle wasn't in love.

She was infatuated.

Somehow that felt less dangerous than being in love, instead, it was something that could be mastered and controlled. At least that was her working theory.

But now her heart had been at war with her header weeks and all Michelle could hear was noise.

She even agreed to go to homecoming. Everything had been flipped upside down and thrown into chaos.

Michelle had only ever known one way to block out the real world, her oldest and truest escape.

She bolted across campus to the school library before it closed for the weekend and braced herself for an oncoming migraine. It wasn’t that Michelle hated the school library, it was a part of her ecosystem, she couldn’t ignore it anymore that she could ignore her locker or the stairs in her apartment building.

But there was just something about the Midtown library that was wrong, The smell was off, all the hardbacks had cheap plastic dust covers and the paperbacks were all coved in a laminate covering all the book covers with a gross adhesive grime, not to mention the shelves had been organized in favor of design with almost no regard for the Dewy Decimal System.

Michelle was fine to meet there for group projects or decathlon team meetings, but now that it was the most practical convenient resource for her to find an escape from the rush of foreign emotions that were overloading her mind.

She found herself drawn to a pristine looking spine and quickly pulled it off the shelf desperate for any kind of escape.

It was an untouched copy of Simone de Beauvoir's  _A Very Easy Death_  which caused Michelle's brow to furrow in confusion. She was standing in the non-fiction section, it wasn't what she had been looking for at all. She had come to find an escape from the chaos of the real work, not wallow in it. A fight broke out between a study group nearby and reminded her that she wasn't in any position to be picky.

Simone de Beauvoir was a genius and it was thin enough that she wouldn't have to feel the grainy cover paste for too long.

She had to find a way to face Valarie again, this plan wasn't going to be sustainable.

After she checked out the book she bolted from the library as quickly as she could. Outside she spotted an empty picnic table nearby and decided she would take advantage of the refreshing fall weather before it was gone. The air smelled musky but it had a sharp taste of a chill that tickled her ears.

She snapped open the spine of the book and was immediately transported to a hotel in Rome in the 1940's but before she can even find begin to get a taste for that world the writing shifted to the author's mother breaking her leg getting out of the bathtub in her flat in France.

The rest of the story followed the narrator’s difficult relationship with her mother over the next few painful weeks leading up to her death.

The relationship struck a nerve with Michelle. Her own mother wasn’t unlike the woman on the page, just younger. After her husband’s death late in life she managed to rebuild herself from the ground up and her daughter admired her for that, but the to have trouble understanding each other.

After an hour Michelle was about halfway through it when she noticed that the sun was setting. She would need to leave soon if she was going to pick up a dress from her mom’s teen pageant princess collection. She was going to thrilled for a chance to doll up her derelict daughter. She may even skip over the passive aggressive jabs that Michelle had grown accustomed to while growing up with a woman who never had to learn to fix her problems like an adult.

All of her usual criticisms of her mother seemed to leave a bitter taste in her mouth, she assumed it was on account of her reading material which only furthered her resolve to put the book away

She was about to pack away her things when she noticed that Betty Brant had zeroed in on her from her from across the parking lot and was now approaching with Terminator-like intensity. She had been darting around the there corner of Michelle’s eye throwing her phone in the face of anyone who agreed to talk to her.

“Awesome, I thought you had left.” She said sliding onto the bench across the table from her.

“What do you want,” Michelle asked skeptically.

“Could I ask you a few questions for a story I’m doing for the morning announcements?” Betty asked already pulling out her phone which told Michelle that no probably wasn’t an acceptable answer.

“A story? You know that's just supposed to be club meetings, lunch menus, game recaps? It's not VICE.”

“Don’t be a bitch,” Betty said pointing her phone at Michelle frowning.

“Why do you always look like your in a bad mood?”

“Because I usually am.”

“Look, do you know who Spider-Man is or not?” Betty asked sourly.

“You really shouldn't listen to anything Flash says?”

“Do you know anything or not?”

“Not really-“  
“Whatever.” Betty rolled her eyes before she began recording and doing her very best impression of Katie Couric “Who do you think the Spider-Man is?”

“I don’t know who he is but I have my suspicions,” Michelle said vaguely.

“Would you care to elaborate?” Betty asked through her teeth.

“No,” Michelle said turning back to her the page she had been reading.

Betty was frowning from behind her phone. “Come on! Please? What if I prompt you with another question?” She asked thrusting the phone into Michelle’s face again,

“What do you think of the theory that the Spider-Man could be a student at Midtown Science and Tech student?” She asked seriously.

“You came up with that theory,” said Michelle without looking up from her book.

Betty had been peddling that story all over school it ever since the decathlon team’s trip to DC. She had taken note of Spider-Man’s appearances around the campus as well as in Washington while a group of there classmates. Most people thought she was crazy but conspiring about which of there classmates could be Spider-Man had become a popular topic across the school which Betty thought, incorrectly, gave her idea more validity.

No one ever made the connection to Peter, with baffled Michelle. She had to assume that most people had never seen Spider-Man in person and had no idea how shot he was. She had to give Betty credit for figuring out as much as she had.

“Just because it's my theory doesn’t mean it's not a theory,” Betty argued.

“Spider-Man isn’t a teenager,” Michelle said looking up at her interrogator. She looked so frustrated, Betty would have to work on that if she was going to cut it in the news business. Along with almost every other aspect of her personality.

“Spider-Man has to be somebody, and there's a lot of evidence that supports me,” Betty said defensively shoving her phone in her purse.

“There's also a lot of evidence that Kubrick faked the moon landing. We shape our own reality.”

“I’m trying to be serious.” Betty insisted standing up looking down at her like she had earned some sort of high ground.

“So am I.” Michelle said staring down Betty coldly “Do you really think your gonna break this story? DailyBugle is offering $5,000 dollars just for leads on the guy.”

“Yeah, but none of them are following this lead,” Betty said smugly raising an eyebrow.

“That's because it’s ridiculous,” Michelle said rolling her eyes.

“How do you know?” Asked Betty.

“Because I do,” Michelle said with complete confidence because she really did know, she was lying, but with conviction.

“God your the worst,” Betty muttered storming off.

Michelle wasn’t sure why she was protecting Peter. She tried to tell herself that it was because she didn’t want Betty to have the satisfaction of being right but she knew that wasn’t really true. Michelle cared very little about what Betty Brant did or didn’t do. Part of her could acknowledge that Peter had his reasons for keeping it private, probably to protect his Aunt’s feelings, but as far as Michelle could tell they were the same reasons that he shouldn’t be out Spider-Manning in the first place.

When she got home it almost felt foreign. Everything was clean and organized, the lingering smell of wine had been replaced with an acidic lemon cleaner. Whenever her mother got sober she lost her ability to sit still and channeled all her energy into cleaning.

“Look what the cat dragged in” she heard her mother call from down the hall. “I thought you were forbidden from coming home until tomorrow.”

Michelle rolled her eyes but held her tongue, her mom would try and provoke a baby into a fight if she thought it was judging her.

“Hey Mom, where’s Frank?” she asked hoping that changing the subject would save her from an argument.

“He picked up a few extra shifts this week. Gives him an excuse to hit the bar with the guys when they get off.”

Frank hated drinking alone. It was part of her mother’s endless dance with alcoholism. She would spiral into until someone, Anna usually, forced her to stop. She would sober up of a while and start making headway on her own but Frank would become more distant. Eventually, she would start having wine with dinner again, then a cocktail with Frank after work. A few months later the cycle would begin again.

“I thought you wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.” She hissed.

“I just needed to get something,” Michelle said quickly hoping she could make this a simple and painless as possible.

“Why wouldn't you just as my sister. I’m sure she would be happy to get you whatever you wanted.” Her mother said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Mom…”

"The flawless Anna, so smart, and amazing, and healthy. You know she’s always looked down on me like she has any idea what I’ve been through. She'd never had to rebuild everything shed ever known. She watched my first daughter run off and now she wants to take you away from me.” He mother ranted. It was a skill that ran in the family.

“She’s not taking me anywhere, and you kicked Gayle out.” Michelle pointed out trying to keep a cool head.

“Of course you would take my perfect sister's side.” her mom spat back.

"I have always taken your side. I fight for you all the time because it means fighting to keep whats left of this family together. If I'm on anyone's side in this it's mine.” Michelle seethed through her teeth. She didn’t come here so her mother could vent her childhood frustrations.

“Don’t act like you wouldn’t be so much happier with her, she has a job and probably cooks organic meals. Why wouldn’t you want to go with her?” Her mother howled.

“Anna can hardly boil an egg,” Michelle mumbled but her mom didn’t seem to hear her.

“Did you come here to pick up the rest of your stuff? Moving out for good?” Her mother always got like this when she tried to get straight. Friend or foe, she would push everyone away if she could.

“No mom, I left so you could sober, which you are since your angry and paranoid. I’m coming back tomorrow.” Michelle said feeling the heat rising in her neck.

“Why bother? If I’m so unfit?” He mother shouted.

Michelle sighed, she knew this was all pointless.

"I didn't come here to fight, I just need to find a dress for homecoming,” Michelle said slowly.

Her mothers face softened and her eyes sparkled like they used to when she watched Gayle saunter across all these pageant stages.

"You're going to Homecoming?" She asked softly.

"Not without a dress,"

"I have the perfect thing-" she started pulling herself out of her seat.

"Mom, really, just let me."

"Trust me, if you hate it then you can find something for yourself and I won't say a word.”

Her mother disappeared back into her bedroom while Michelle braced herself for whichever elegant parent gown of Gayle’s her mother had in store for her this time. She ducked away into her room to wait. It had been left untouched slice she left for Anna’s, her team blazer and medal still crumpled in a ball on her bed. She pushed them onto the floor and curled up on her bed.

It smelled like home.

She could have fallen asleep right then but her mom walked in delicately carrying a garment bag before laying it in front of Michelle.

“I think you really going to like this…” She said pulling the bag’s long zipper open and Michelle pulled out the pressed garment.

The dress was blooming with bold yellow leaves over a delicate sheer material that shined like silver. It was a simple A-Line silhouette but it carried all its vibrancy in the brocade.

Michelle was amazed. She didn’t think it was possible for a dress to suit her and yet she was the most unexpected choice that was singing to her.

“It’s perfect,” She said softly before looking up to her mother’s face with confusion. “Gayle would never have worn something like this..”

“I got it for you” Her mother shrugged.

“Why?” Michelle asked.

“In case you ever needed it,” She smiled, “And they didn’t have my size.”

Michelle smiled up at her before looking back at the dress. Running her fingers along the delicate buttons.

"I'm doing the best I can you know,” Her mother suddenly said softly.

“I do,” Michelle said taking her had and squeezing it.

"So, do you have a date to this Homecoming?” Her mother asked slowly.

“No,” Michelle said rolling her eyes pulling her hand back.

"Forgive me, I just never thought I would have an occasion to give this to you,” She said gesturing to the dress.

“I don’t need a date to go to a dance.”

“Of course you don’t”

“I don’t want one anyway” Michelle mumbled bitterly.

“It would be ok if you did-“

“Why? I like my life how it is. I don’t need anyone else blowing through and tearing it all apart.” Michelle shrugged but a strange look came crossed her mothers face. A sort of faraway pain played behind her eyes.

After an unbearably long moment of tense silence, her mother finally spoke.

“I’ve always been afraid that you would never be able to open yourself up to someone after what you saw growing up with your father and me.”

“Mom, come on!” Michelle cried rolling her eyes. “Not everything is about you.”

“I know that! I do, I just worry.” She sighed. “You father was a monster but I still loved him, and maybe you can’t understand it yet but sometimes you feel your whole worth is tied to that person.”

“That sound unhealthy.”

“Don’t get smart with me, I’m trying to have a tender moment with you.” Her mother said pointedly. “It was unhealthy, but it was built on something rotten. One day I hope that you will find someone that you can open yourself to and you can have something that grows from honesty and compassion”

An image of Peter flickered into Michelle's head and she had to bite her tongue to stop herself from laughing her mind’s ironic connection between Peter and honesty.

Instead, she asked her mother why she had stayed with her father for so long. She had always wondered, but it always seemed like hallowed ground that should remain unturned.

"Love isn't a voluntary emotion, it's like anger,” She told her. “You don't choose when it's going to hit you or how hard it's going to affect you until it does. Then we cope the best we can, and I coped the best I could with your father. I still love him in a sick and twisted way... probably always will. But he couldn't love me the same way and it was breaking my heart."

Michelle tried to understand that sort of devotion or obsession. Romance has always had a glow of ease to them, but she understood that relationships in the real world it took work to make partnerships last but she wondered how she would know when she was fighting something that worthy of that kind of work.

So, why are you going to this dance?” Her mother asked her.

"Couldn't I just go because I want to?” Michelle asked.

"You could, but you wouldn’t." She said pointedly.

"My friend Liz put the whole thing together. she wanted me to come” Michelle explained.

"Liz from your quiz team?” She asked and Michelle nodded.

“So, did she guilt you into it? Or is it blackmail or-“

“I just want to be a good friend.” Michelle cut in.

Her mother put up her hands in surrender.

“I didn’t know how to get out of it.” She conceded.

“I’m happy there are still things that I can teach you.” her mother said with a wink.

Michelle thanked her again and carefully zipped the dress in its bag. She decided to leave her books with her mom for the night since she would be back the next day anyway. Her mother gave her a tight hug and promised to order pizza and cannoli for dinner the next day to celebrate her homecoming.

She made it back to Anna’s with enough time to change but not enough for Anna to style her hair much to Michelle’s relief. The dress suited her like she was and she hated the idea of pulling a full ‘She's All That’ cliche.

Anna had run out the corner florist after Michelle had texted her to pick up a corsage and she had come home with eight different flowers arrangements sewn to ribbons each more elaborate than the one before it. Michelle grabbed the most unobtrusive on the way out the door before Anna had any chance to tell her it clashed with her dress or to try and take pictures.

The dance had only just started by the time she got back to campus. The gymnasium was only beginning to fill up with overdressed adolescence. Michelle was impressed by how transformed the room felt from when she had last seen it that afternoon. There was an enchanting quality to the lighting that almost made her forget how Charles had thrown up from exertion during last years physical fitness test. It might have even felt romantic if not for the deafening synth cords of Chaka Kahn.

She found Sally by the punch bowl and they made awkward conversation as the rest of the school filed in there formal wear. Abraham and Cindy both seemed unsure of how to act around each other while Charles made some disgusting comments regarding his Spanish teachers dress that Sally quickly cut him down for. Michelle could see Betty and Seymour across the gym with their friend looking just as uncomfortable as Michelle’s group was, although they just seemed like they belonged there. Unlike Ned dated off his fedora from Liz’s party for the occasion as well as a bright yellow boutonniere the same shade of yellow as her dress.

“We match!” He said pointing excitedly, between his lapel and her dress “I got this from my gran’s garden!” He added gesturing to the rose in his lapel.

“Small world,” Michelle noted unamused.

“Do you wanna dance later? He asked having missed her sarcasm.

“No.” She answered quickly while Ned tried not to look too disappointed before turning to ask Abe whether he had tied this tie himself or had help while Michael served the gymnasium.

Things were starting to liven up, some kids were dancing and everything started to feel a little less contrived. Sally was telling them a story about her uncle who had been the road manager for White Snake when Michelle noticed Liz cutting across the gym. She looked amazing, more suited to a formal dance than anyone else there. Michelle knew Peter couldn’t be far behind as she felt her chest tighten.

Michelle wondered if she looked as uncomfortable as she looked. She tried to listen to Sally’s sort about how her parents met during a music video shoot that her Uncle had been supervising but she couldn’t focus on any of her words. The music, the shouting, and ringing in Michelle’s ears were all wrapped up in a cloud of sound separating her brain from her ears. noise, Ned keeps looking over his shoulder for his little buddy which only made her palms sweat in anticipation. She tried to focus on anything other than Peter’s entrance, what could possibly be taking him so long? It was almost like he’d was doing this to make her miserable.

Just when she was getting ready to go find him in the parking lot and drag him into his dream date herself Michelle noticed Ned lift up and saw him looking at Peter standing just outside the gymnasium doors looking petrified.

Michelle raised her hand to wave to him before she thought better of herself and flipped him off instead. He opened the doors to the gym with the classic look of the nerd boy who had just landed the girl of his dreams and had no idea what to do.

It rebaked of a John Hughes movie.

Abe had quietly asked Cindy to dance and had drifted away from the group while Ned had left to say hi to his buddy. Michelle realized that Sally had also left them leaving her alone with Charles who was looking at her appraisingly.

“So….” He slurred, “Wanna dance?

Michelle’s face made a fist in response and Charles darted away afraid that she would hit him if he so much as looked at her again.

Despite Liz’s best efforts, she was not enjoying herself. The rest of the night was going to be an endless cycle of dodging Charles, pretending to be interested in what other people were talking about and choking down the lump in her throat that came up whenever she saw Peter and Liz together.

She could see Abe and Cindy with there arms gingerly wrapped around each other looking both happy and terrified. Michelle felt a small ache akin to envy in her heart.

Nothing about this experience was what she would consider being fun.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed something vaguely Peter-shaped slipping out the back door. She turned to see a stunned Liz standing in there middle of the dance floor before running out into the south hall.

The jerk couldn't even make it a week without chasing after some distant call to adventure. Michelle would have thought that if anything would have tempted him to take a back seat she imagined a date with Liz would have been at the top of the list. She wondered if he was more Spider-Man than Peter Parker.

Michelle was fuming to herself and hardly noticed that Charles had made his way back to her. Michelle ungraciously bolting in the opposite direction to the nearest exit.

She took a deep breath on the other side of the door. The air seemed crisper outside of the warmth of the dance. She wasn't sure what it was she was looking for. Maybe Peter? Maybe Liz? Maybe just the calm of the deserted hallways. She found herself moving towards the girl's room where she assumed Liz and Betty had run off to when something on the ground caught her attention.

Ir was a tie, but not just any tie, it was Peter’s. Michelle recognized it as the one his uncle used to wear whenever he took May out when Anna would babysit Peter. She knew that he intuition was right. Peter had made the choice to be a vigilante instead of a teenager. She felt a sinking in her stomach. She wanted to believe that he had changed but something inside of her had always known that this would be the choice he would make.

She picked it up and carefully tucked it into her boot. She couldn’t leave it behind, it felt important, heavy with sentimentality. Peter may not have been in the right frame of mind to think about his grieving aunt so Michelle took it upon herself to do it for him.

Suddenly she heard a loud crash coming from the other side of the school. At first, she thought it was just Jason and his idiot friends setting off fireworks in the quad but then she heard another crash, louder than before. There was something metallic to it. Like a car crash

Before she had any time to imagine what could have caused it she saw Betty bolting out of the bathroom storming down the hall phone first, her heels clicking as she attempted to run.

Michelle ’s curiosity got the best of her as she tried to follow Betty from a safe distance but it wasn’t easy as Betty was moving as fast as her short legs could carry her. Eventually, she gave up on tailing her and just decided to stride alongside her instead.

“You heard it too?” she asked when she noticed that she was no longer alone.

Michelle just nodded.

“Here,” Betty said shoving her phone in Michelle’s hands as the closed in on the back exit, “You can record me, This is going to look great on my Columbia application.”

Michelle just followed her out the door hitting the button to begin taping.

The parking lot was a wreck, like Thor and the Hulk had been having an impromptu bus-throning contest and were both sore losers about it. Betty was giving an introduction to her ‘audience’ when Michelle heard something and began walking towards it.

“Hey! Where are you going?” Betty protested before seeing what Michelle had discovered.

The smell of leaking gasoline and twisted steel hung in the air. It smelled foul and foreign like she was walking into a world more dangerous than her own. Peter’s world.

It was a man who was stuck to the side of one of the busses with Peter’s webbing surrounded by Jason and some of his burnout friends taking selfies with him and some weird metal boxing glove.

“Move!” Betty demanded upon seeing them, Jason fled grabbing the gauntlet as soon as he heard her but the others weren’t so quick. She pushed them out of the way before turning back to Michelle. “Are you still recording?” she asked fine her hair.

Michelle nodded while the strange man stuck to the bus started shouting about getting out of his face, but Betty was unshaken.

“Who are you?”

“None of your business.”

“Who glued you to this bus.” Betty continued unfazed.

“Who do you think?” The creep shot back nodding to the webs on his hands.

“So it was Spider-Man?” Betty pressed and the creep nodded. “How did you know he was going to be here?”

“My boss knew.”

“Who’s your boss?” She asked but the creep went stoic. “Why would your boss think Spider-Man would be at a high school dance? What about you? Why do you think he was here?”

Betty pressed on her anxiety rising in her voice while the man remained unruffled.

Betty turned to Michelle “He’s not talking, what should I do? Should I hit him? Is that stupid?” She asked.

“I mean, yes, but that doesn’t mean it won't work,” Michelle told her with a shrug.

“Holy shit!” They heard someone yelling somewhere in the lot, and both began scanning around the mess of broken buses to see who it had come from.

Flash Thomson wandered into the scene looking shaken. When he saw Betty and Michelle his face lit up and he began to dash towards them.

“Guys you won’t believe what just happened to me!” He called to them looking manic.

Michelle looked down at her shiny dress, then around at the exhibition of destruction around her, then looking back to the shady guy glued to a school bus behind her before finally looking back to Flash.

“I mean the bar for believability was already on the floor but I guess you can try…”

Flash ignored her while Betty just rolled her eyes.

“Some Spider-Man wannabe just parkour-ed onto my car and stole it along with my phone!” He shouted.

Betty’s face lit up

“What do you mean Spider-Man wannabe?” Betty asked.

“I mean he was wearing some crappy DIY costume- ” Flash stopped talking when Betty pointed at the webs that were holding their irritable interview subject hostage.

“That was the real Spider-Man?” Flash said dazedly. “Spider-Man stole my car?”

Michelle shrugged while Betty started commanding her to start taping again.

She complied before asking Flash a question before Betty had any chance.

“What happened?”

“Spider-Man stole my car!” Flash said again his anger coming fading its way back int his system.

“How?” Michelle asked.

“What?” Flash asked confused.

“How did he steal your car?”

“He j-jumped down and told me he n-n-needed my car and my phone.” Flash stuttered.

“He asked you?”

“Yeah.”

“Yand you gave it to him?”

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t threaten you?”

“He was Spider-Man!”

“You didn’t think he was then.” Michelle pointed out seeing. Flash and Betty looked like they were both going to lose it.

“I mean he didn’t have the suit or the accent like the guy in DC…”

“So, you gave Spider-Man your car?” Michelle asked

  
The guy glued to the bus started cackling behind her.

“What do you children think you're doing?” They heard someone yelling. The three of them spun around to see Principal Morita running towards them. “You all need to leave now! The police are on there way here-“

As though on cue the sirens of a police cruiser came speeding around the corner or the school stopping just in front of them. When the officer behind the wheel got out of the car and Michelle immediately recognized him. It was he neighbor, Mr. Gonzales, or officer Gonzales tonight.

“Look who found some trouble,” He said looking at her smugly.

“I was just telling them to leave-“ Principal Morita began to say before Officer Gonzales cut him off.

“Well did any of you see anything? Did this gentleman say anything to you?” He asked pointing to the guy Spider-Man had left for them.

“I taped everything he said on this,” Michelle said handing him Betty’s phone.

“Hey!” Betty said.

“Is this yours?” Officer Gonzales asked her, and Betty nodded.

“Will you let us use it to build a case against this man? We would be able to get your phone back to you later tonight.”

“Could I still use my interview for the morning annulments?” She asked meekly.

“I’m afraid not. It would be evidence.” Officer Gonzalez explained and Betty blanched at the idea of giving up her scoop. But they all knew she wasn’t going to refuse to hand over potentially incriminating evidence, especially not in front of the principal.

Betty allowed them to take her phone before running off to go find another so she would have some courage for Monday’s announcements.

“Can I report a stolen car?” Flash asked as Betty ran inside.

“You gave it away,” Michelle mumbled earning her a scowl from Flash.

“What happened?” Officer Gonzales asked.

“Spider-Man took my car and my phone after he was done with this dude.”

“What?” Officer Gonzales said, his eyes going wide “You should have said right away. Does your car had GPS Tracking? Could you activate it?”

Suddenly Michelle could see what was happening. The cops couldn’t just arrest this guy. They had nothing concrete to arrest him for. They need to bring in Spider-Man to file charges on him, but that would mean arresting Peter as well.

Officer Gonzales apologized to her before ushering her away so he could take Flash’s statement. Michelle felt like she was sleepwalking. He feet weren’t quite making contact with the ground. Peter had no idea what was coming for him and she had no way to warn him. She tried to tell herself that he deserved whatever he got but it had the tenor of a lie in her head.

She floated through the halls in a daze and let her mind wander back to just a week ago when the whole world had fallen in love with the hero while she had been busy judging the guy under the mask. She wished she had just talked to him then. Maybe she could have helped him see who reckless he was being.

Michelle couldn't hear what they were saying but could tell from the squealing candor of Ned’s voice that he was lying, probably trying to save Peter’s ass.

At least they could keep each other company in detention, Michelle thought before she remembered that Peter would probably end his night in prison.

She heard someone calling from behind her, “Hey! Shelly!”

Michelle turned to see Flash herring towards her.

“That's not my name.”

“Whatever. Can I use your phone?” He asked.

“I left it at home.” Michelle shrugged.

A look of comet horror overtook Flash’s face.

“H-H-How i-i-is that-a-a-t even….” He sputtered before spinning on his hell down the hall towards the gym. “Forget it! I'll find someone at the dance!”

Homecoming felt live it was weeks ago for Michelle. There had been an unnerving electricity hanging in the air ever once first heard that crash rang across Midtown, Michelle could taste it. Something of great consequence was taking place and Peter was in the middle of it.

Michelle felt a chill run through her and suddenly she began to feel a sort of fear. It was a fear for Peter, for May, for Ned. For a moment a canyon opened inside of her as she imagined a world where Peter didn’t come back this time. She wanted to escape from the lead-colored walls of the empty school so she did.

She went outside into the brisk autumn night, looked up at the sky and imagined stars. Michelle had never seen the proper star before. She had seen pictures and the occasional satellite but she had always been in a city that washed out the night's sky. Sometimes that made her sad but knew that the reality would probably never measure up to her imagination.

Tonight the sky was just empty and Michelle couldn’t seem to fill it. Her mind kept going back to that idiot boy who never looked before he leaped. Spider-Man had made a splash over the past week but he wasn’t really part of the known super-hero universe yer, but he kept acting like he was.

Michelle remembered something she had read earlier that Simone de Beauvoir’s sister had said to her

“Death itself does not frighten me; it is the jump I am afraid of.“

Michelle wondered if death frightened Peter. She wondered if anything did. Fear was important, it was what keeps you alive. If Peter wasn’t afraid for himself, then he was leaving that fear up to the people who cared about him.

Maybe this was why he kept it a secret? If Peter were truly the selfish arrogant jerk she and been thinking about him as wouldn’t he be bragging about it all the time?

Michelle felt an overwhelming guilt blanket her, she had it all wrong.

She was about to leave for the train when Michelle saw Liz walking out of the gymnasium. looking deflated, the glowing girl that had walked into homecoming had disappeared and in its place was another, colder, Liz.

“I’m sorry I made you come to this stupid thing MJ.” Liz said sighing "I hate dances. I've spent four years getting my hopes up that one of them wouldn’t be awful. It's just an exercise in disappointment."

“Speak for yourself, I watched Betty get her crazy Tim Russert on with some thug that Spider-Man caught.” Said Michelle,

“Yeah, Betty told me the cops showed up and kicked all the students out and took her phone for evidence, she was really upset.” Said Liz.

“Yeah, they were hoping her video would have some evidence, but they're probably going to end up having to let that go,” Michelle said with a shrug.

“How do you know that?” Liz asked.

“One of the cops that showed up is my neighbor, he’s mentioned having issues with him before,” Said Michelle “What do they have him on? Being an enemy of Spider-Man isn’t a crime.”

“Spider-Man only goes after bad guys”

“Yeah but cops don’t know that, and lawyers can’t prove it. Right now they're trying to track down Spider-Man using Flash’s phone.”

“Your cop friend tell you that?” Liz asked.

“No, but it’s kind of obvious right?”

“Please don’t slip into some weird MJ-conspiracy, my night has been complicated enough,” Liz said rolling her eyes

“The system isn't equipt to process criminals brought in by super-powered vigilantes. If neither of them can change than we’re all doomed.”

“And I thought my night couldn’t get any worse after I got stood up by a Sophomore in front of the whole school.”

“Sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“You deserve better though.”

“Peter said the same thing.”

“He’s a smart guy.”

“He stood me up!”

“He’s a jerk. A smart jerk. Like an unsuccessful Zuckerburg.”

Liz snorted a small agh and Michelle was happy that she didn’t seem to be moping over Peter. She could do a whole lot better than him anyway. They both could.

The two of them sat in a comfortable silence looking over the parking lot.

Michelle would have never imagined that becoming friends with Liz would have been as simple as it was. High School has a way of making everything seem so much more complicated than it really is. Somehow Liz seemed to walk beyond all of those barriers of social hierarchy by just being kind. It was a quality Michelle accepted she needed to work on in herself.

“Are we wearing the same corsage?” Liz asked after some time had passed.

Michelle looked down at the two pink roses they each had fasted to their writs with green ribbon. She couldn’t help but smile as she told Liz that Peter’s Aunt May must have gone to the same florist as her Aunt Anna.

“They live around the corner from each other, my Aunt used to babysit us when we were little.”

“I didn’t know that.” Liz smiled softly. “Why aren’t you guys closer?”

Michelle shrugged, “My mom moved got her own place. We were too young to really keep up with each other. Then we were in high school and you can’t exactly pick up where you left off from third grade.”

“His loss is my gain,” Liz said grinning.

“Mine too.”

Suddenly the ring of sirens was crashing in front of the gym. Michelle saw that it was Mr. Gonzales and his partner again. She couldn’t understand why they would be back unless they had actually managed to catch Peter this time and we're here to pull all his school records

Fear hit her like a bucket of ice as the image of the police apprehending Peter. Dragging him into a prison cell as J. Johnnah Jamason cackled maniacally while snapping pictures from behind an old-timey camera. The thought paralyzed her, she hardly noticed as Officer Gonzales approached her looking forlorn.

“Hey, Michelle.” He said slowly. “We need to speak to a student named Elizabeth Toomes, do you know her?”

Michelle’s fear transformed into shock as quickly as her heart began racing.

“That's me, whats this about?” Liz asked.

“I’m sorry, your father has been arrested but we need to take you into the station to your mother.” Officer Gonzales said.

“What?” Liz shouted. Michelle couldn’t move, her whole body was frozen processing this data.

Liz looked back at her forlorn but Michelle didn’t know what to do or say. What can you say to a girl who just found out her father was a criminal?

She reached out and gave her a small hug. Liz seemed lost in her own waves of emotion from anger to sadness to shock and back to anger again.

Michelle watched the curser drive away with Liz and wondered if this had anything to do with Peter’s disappearance.

She already knew the answer.,

Why else would Mr. Gonzalez here been the officer sent if it didn’t have something to top with Spider-Man.

It seemed unlikely that Peter just happened to Liz’s dad in the middle of some criminal enterprise that night and Peter wasn’t the type to plan an elaborate frame-up to incarcerate his crush’s father

Michelle felt horrible. She slowly climbed the steps to the train platform trying to reconcile the storm inside her head.

Everything that she thought she knew about Spider-Man had always seemed at odds with the person she knew to be Peter Parker, now she could see that it was the guy under the mask who acted truly heroic and for the greatest test good and not some monster that the suit had created to feed Peters ego.

The fear still hadn’t left her. It fell over her like an invisible snow storm that got heavier the longer she waited and left her shivering. What had happened? Was Peter all right? Michelle hated that she left her phone at home but her dress didn’t have any pockets and she didn’t own any bags other than her backpack, it had never seemed necessary until now.

Michelle imagined every possible scenario. She thought about Peter getting thrown from buildings and bridges. She imagined him and Liz’s father in the middle of a train heist or crashing buildings on top of each other. She had nothing but questions and fear when she remembered what she had found in the hall earlier that night.

She reached into her boot and tugged Peter’s tie out from its hiding place. It was wrinkled and a little sweaty, but it was all she had and it was his. She alternated wrapping in between her palms until she reached her stop.

The action calmed her more than any news she read about how Spider-Man had stopped a plane heist, leaving the scene before the police or Damage Control arrived, any of the postings of him wearing a costume made from sweatpants near the crash site in Coney Island. The only thing that seemed to bring her any piece was the feeling of Peter’s tie in her palm.

She left it tied around her wrist as she an Abner shared Anna’s couch for there last night together a while she drifted off to sleep she imagined it was Peter’s hand instead.

 


	8. Amazing Fantasy

The rest of the weekend went by in a blur all the details seemed to run together making it impossible to distinguish reality from a dream. Michelle had left her aunts house to go back home the morning after the dance as though she were sleepwalking. Her mind had been digesting every bit of information she could find about Spider-Man, Liz’s Dad and the Stark Industries crash as soon as anything came out. By Saturday afternoon she was exhausted but it was impossible for her to stop thinking

She texted Liz, who thanked her for reaching out but after that, it was radio silence. Michelle thought it was best not to push her. She would talk about it when she was ready, probably after all the local news crews moved off of her lawn.

That night she felt as though her mind was suffocating from all every single piece of news of opinion that it had taken in over the bast twenty-four hours and she desperately needed air, volunteering to go pick up pizza instead of just having it delivered. She tucked Peter’s tie into the pocket of her jacket without a second thought. The cool night air hit her like a bucket of water, and for a moment she was able to breathe without thinking.

She slowly made her way down the beat up sidewalk relieved to escape her own mind when she saw a hooded figure dragging their feet across the street and knew at wince that it was Peter. He was darting quickly around cars and bikes with an inhuman grace. For a moment she wondered how he did it, she remembered, he did it with superpowers.

Something triggered in her back that left one part of her relaxed while another tightened. A swell of emotion began to overcome her that she pushed down like vomit as she balled the smooth fabric of his tie in her fist. She knew she would have to reconcile those feelings eventually but she wasn’t ready it. Not yet.

Michelle spun on her heal and backtracked three blocks before she realized that she had forgotten to pick up dinner.

She didn’t sleep that night, in spite of being back in the warm embrace of her own bed and without the presence of a forty pound cat in her way. She tossed and turned trying to banish the image of Peter that kept swinging through her head.

When she heard pidgins outside her window begin to quack at the sun she knew that it was futile. She quietly got dressed and tiptoed to the kitchen not wanting to wake Frank or her mother. She scribbled a quick note about leaving to work on a school project before she silently slipped out the apartment door.

The sun was still rising when she stepped outside, painting the whole block in a brilliant wash of gold, transforming it into something foreign and magical. It might have been the lack of sleep but something about it gave Michelle a sense that some kind of transformative magic had taken hold.

“Michelle!” A small voice shouted from behind her. She turned to see Mr. And Mrs. Gonzales walking out of the building with a grinning Noah between them.

“you're up early.” Smiled Mrs. Gonzales.

“Yeah, you to…” Michelle said hoping her face could muster the energy to smile back at them.  
“We're off to church.” Mr. Gonzalez explained.

“Michelle!” Noah shouted again. It was then that Michelle realized that Noah had been saying her full name.

The surprise must have shown on her face as Mrs. Gonzales explained, “Oh, yeah, someone learned the ‘Ch’ sound!” She beamed.

“Choo-Choo!” Noah yelled

“That's right!”

“Well, congratulations!” Michelle hoped her voice hid the strange sad feeling that had pricked her heart. She was being to get used to being called MJ.

“How’s your friend doing?” Mr. Gonzales asked.

“I dunno,” She shrugged, “she’s got a lot going on right now I guess.”

“That's putting it mildly, she’s lucky to have you anyway. It’s important to have friends around you during things like this.”

As the Gonzalezes left for church Michelle wondered off in the opposite direction with no destination in mind. She found herself on a bus, then a train and an hour or so later she was standing behind yellow caution tape on Coney Island.

Most of the wreckage had been dealt with by Damage Control the day before but the imprint of the crash had still left the2 scene wrecked asunder. She stood there staring at the chaos slowly wrapping Peter’s tie around her fingers.

For the past two weeks, she had been trying to convince herself that Peter was selfish and stupid. She had conceived an image of him that was one-dimensional and shallow that made it easier for her to ignore what her whole body had been screaming.

If she hadn't been so eager to find an excuse not to like him she might have actually considered why she did in the first place.

He was a kid with extraordinary abilities that had become a hero because he felt like he had too. He definitely enjoys himself, but he never chooses to become who he is now. He was a kid who sometimes made bad choices for the right reasons. He was a good person at his core and that was the person that Michelle had always known was there.

Everything she thought she believed about the Avengers and Spider-Man in now all seemed so small and inconsequential amongst the wreckage. She tried to imagine baby-faced Peter Parker out here with Liz’s corny dad fighting amongst the twisted steel and fire and it all seemed so ridiculous.

But somehow that only made everything cleared for her. Peter had gotten himself into a situation that, for better or worse, was his to deal with. Nothing would have been able to stop him, not the police, or Tony Stark or even Liz. Peter had to do it because it was the right thing to do, what Spider-Man would do.

Michelle understood now that Spider-Man wasn’t just some reckless alter ego, but was instead one and the same with Peter. The two were and would forever be tied to each other. Peter still wasn’t responsible, but he was still 15. He was making mistakes and figuring it out as he went, just like she was only with superpowers.

Maybe part of her didn’t want to believe that Peter was becoming someone she no longer recognized as Peter, or maybe she just always assumed the worst of people, or maybe the answer was something much simpler and also much deeper.

She wanted to believe that it was all just a crush. She had been taken in by his face and his hair and those sad brown eyes, but now she knew better. She was falling for him, much harder than she realized. She had been falling for his heart and she knew that wasn't something that she would be able to dismiss and that really terrified her.

Michelle had lost track of time sitting for hours in a trance as the trucks from the DODC came and went. She was surprised to see the sun growing lower and checked the time. It was late and she hadn’t even thought about her homework until just then. She decided then that she would just blow it off. She would figure out a way to make it up later. Shoving Peter’s tie back into her pocket she slowly began to drift to the train stop.

She was still stuck in her head as she stepped onto the train back to Queens, she wondered if she would ever snap out of her daze when a loud sharp voice cut through the fog.

“Well look what we have here”

Her neck snapped around to see none other than Valarie seated nearby wearing a smug smile.

Michelle felt a warmth spread through her, and with ought thinking, she had suddenly wrapped Valarie in a tight hug.

“Well, this is a surprise…” Mused Valarie. When Michelle finally realized her she gave her a stern look and demanded to know where she had been for the past week.

“It’s been a long week…” Michelle started suddenly finding a new found fascination with the greasy train floor.

“I know, I watch the news. That Spider-Man may be a magnet for trouble, but I’m happy to know that he’s standing between you and getting hurt.” Said Valarie, “But that doesn’t explain why I haven’t seen you.”

“I guess I just… after what happened last time I saw you… I just…” Michelle tried to find the words but wasn’t sure where to start, then without any warning, Michelle let everything just fall away.

She told Valarie everything that had happened since Liz's party. She told her about her confusing feelings for Peter, her tentative friendship with Liz and Liz’s awful friends. She told her about winning the decathlon and the event Washington. She left out the part where Peter was the one inside the Spider-Man suit but otherwise, she just let everything pour out of her while Valarie rubbed circles on her back.

For her part, Valarie didn't say much. She asked a few questions and made a few noises of shock or disappointment. When Michelle told her how Peter asked Liz to the dance she didn't say a word, just wrapped her arm around Michelle's shoulder and held her.

She talked non stop until they got back to Queens, it was possibly the longest Michelle had ever spoken in her entire life.

"What do I do?" She asked as she realized that her stop was approaching and soon they would need to go there separate ways.

“Sometimes you’re gonna feel things and think things that seem to defy everything you think about yourself. Your gonna want to hold them in tight because they’re powerful and you don’t want to let that weakness out into the world. If there ever was a girl who could will her heart to stone it would be you, but your human and your falling in love and it’s horrible.”

"I’m not in love!” Michael protested.

“Oh yes, you are!” Valarie laughing. “It’s ok, it’s normal and it’s wonderful and it’s the worst thing ever. I wouldn’t trade places with you for the world”

“Thanks.” Spat Michelle sarcastically.

“It's getting better... or maybe it doesn’t, but you’ll get better at dealing with it.” She said rubbing circles on Michelle’s back as the train slowed down at Michelle’s stop.

“This is me...” she said meekly.

“Hey,” Valarie said grabbing her hand as she stood. “Your too smart for you’re own good, but you’re going to be ok. I promise.” She gave her hand a small squeeze before releasing her.

Michelle gave her a small smile. Part of her knew she was right, she just wasn’t ready to accept that these things would take time.

“And I better see you Monday, I've got a whole stack of books waiting for you,” Valarie called after her as the train doors opened and Michelle felt a real smile spread over her face.

That night Michelle Michelle dreamed that she was swinging through downtown Manhattan like Peter did, only she instead of webs she was holding on to Peter’s tie as she scored through the air.

Walking back into school on Monday was surreal No one had bothered to take down any of the homecoming banners around the school. Michelle realized that it was probably Liz who would have come in over the weekend to take them down over the past couple years.

Sometime after homeroom, Michelle spotted Liz cleaning out her locker. Michelle had thought something like this might happen, her mom had said the day before that if it had been then she wouldn’t want Michelle anywhere near the trial and the press around it.

She didn’t know what to say if there was anything that could be said to someone who just found out their father was a monster. From her own experience, Michelle would have thought Liz would want to avoid the subject, but Liz wasn’t like her.

“I know my dad didn’t do this on his own. He could barely even fix our water heater” She said at some point. She had spent the weekend researching the extent of her father’s weapon manufacturing. She had been horrified to find out that one of his weapons had caused the explosion in DC.

“Promise me you’ll stay in touch?” Liz asked her

“Yeah,” Michelle

“I mean it, don’t just shrug. I want to know if you ever punch Flash in the face and where you go to college so promise me ok?”

“I promise.”

“I know you MJ, your not as cold as you want everyone to think. You have a good heart, don’t be afraid to show that to people sometimes,” Said Liz” This is the part where I would hug you but it’s you so…”

She and Michelle each took a step back.

“I’m gonna miss you,” Michelle mused, “Weird huh?”

“Not at all! I’m amazing” Liz smiled before something caught her eye, “I gotta go, my mom…”

“Don’t worry, I’ll text you,” Michelle said waving her off.

As she watched her go she a hollow feeling swept over her and she realized that she felt lonely. She had been so comfortable being alone she had forgotten how empty it could feel.

Lunch was weird, she didn’t feel welcome with Betty and Seymour now that Liz was gone and it still seemed too soon to try to act normally around Peter and Ned again. She considered skipping altogether when She noticed Cindy Moon reading alone.

She had never cared for Cindy, she was abrasive and tried way too hard, but Michelle still had the lonely tickle in her chest that seemed to be impairing her judgment as she slid across the table from her.

“Do you mind?” She asked when Cindy looked up surprised.

“No.” Cindy said, still looking confused and apprehensive, like Michelle was about to throw a pie in her face at any moment.

The two each sat for a while in uncomfortable silence

“Do you like him?” Cindy asked suddenly, catching Michelle off guard.

“Who?” She asked, eyes wide with shock.

Cindy nodded to Peter, “The one your always staring at.”

Michelle froze, she had been caught. She had prided herself on her her ability to be discrete. She considered lying, but it would be too obvious now.

“I don’t want too…” Michelle said quietly, feeling as though she had lost some kind of battle of wills with Cindy.

“Yeah, I could tell” Cindy laughed “you're not the only one who's observant.”

“So you're not just obsessed with me?” Michelle smirked

“Oh no, I was obsessed with you for a long time.” Cindy replied casually, “I hated you, it never seems to matter how hard I work, you always come out on top. It drove me insane, and you make it all look so effortless. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do anything you weren’t amazing at. I even heard you singing on the bus back from DC and I wanted to slap you, but I couldn’t because then you would see that I was crying and would never let me live that down.The only reason I’m ahead of you on the honors list is that you do the bare minimum, If you ever worked like I did I would never stand a chance.”

“…So what changed?” Michelle asked. She had never imagined that she had managed to torment a person for years without even trying.

“I dunno. At some point, I guess I actually started to see you as a person. You're always tired, your parents never show up to anything, you keep to yourself. Once I stopped seeing you as the physical embodiment of all of my insecurities I guess I figured that you might be really smart, but you have more important things going on in your life than being valedictorian.

School is stupid and you’re already too smart for any of the teachers here and they all know and are terrified to challenge you, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t find some way to challenge yourself.”

"Look, I'm sorry for all those times I was mean to you."

"What are you talking about? You're like that with everyone. I thought that was just your personality.” Cindy said looking shocked.

“I guess, but I don’t want it to be,” Michelle explained.

“Well, thanks for the heads up I guess, I won’t tell the principle that you’ve been brainwashed or anything.”

“So, Whats going on with you and Abe?” Michelle asked, desperate to shift the conversation away from her and her feelings

“What do you mean?” Cindy asked blushing.

Michelle did her best impression of Betty, “I mean are you, like, boyfriend-girlfriend? going steady? Did he give you his pin?” She asked.

“I don’t know? It's complicated…” Cindy mumbled turning bright red

“Does it have to be?” Michelle asked when the bell signed the end of lunch period.

Michelle wondered if Cindy had suspected Peter was Spider-Man, she doubted it, most people only notice what they wanted to. The rest of the day Peter was never far from her thoughts, but it didn’t torment her like it had before.

She was begging to accept that maybe she couldn’t just will her feelings for Peter away. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to anymore. Maybe it was all just hormones, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something deeper at play. It had a name, but something about it felt so big and terrifying, she couldn’t bring herself to name it yet.

Mr. Harrington had called a team meeting for decathlon after school. It was to start preparing for next season and had been on the books long before the new’s about Liz’s dad broke, but everyone seemed to know that it was the most pressing issue. Liz was going to graduate that year, but traditionally the former team captain had a hand in choosing the next.

Michelle had been expecting Mr. Harrington to pick Cindy or Abraham, they had shown the most dedication to the team, so she was genuinely surprised when her name was announced.

She was the only one, everyone else seemed to see her as Liz’s natural successor. She quickly glanced around the table, Peter was grinning and clapping while Cindy raised an eyebrow as if to say ‘I told you so’.

But something still didn’t feel quite right.

“Uh, Thank you,” She said slowly, “My friends call me MJ.”

“I thought you didn’t have any friends,” Snaked Ned.

“I didn’t,” Michelle said simply when Peter’s phone buzzed across from her.

“I uh, gotta go…” Peter said ominously, clearly trying to duck out quietly to go fight aliens of saving a kitten stuck in a tree. MJ had been watching him duck in and out of his real life for a year now without anyone ever calling him out on it and she had had about enough.

“Hey, where are you going?” She asked Peter who froze. He looked petrified as he wordlessly looked to Ned for help and vaguely gesturing towards the exit and Michelle shouldn’t help herself.

“What are you hiding Peter?” She asked watching his eyes get almost as big as the bug eyes on his mask. Michelle was tempted to just let him hang there, but she couldn’t bring herself to torches him like that. “I’m just kidding, I don’t care.” She snorted. “Bye”

She turned back to her notebook and suggested running some drills while Peter quickly shuffled out of his seat off meet death, destruction and all kinds of danger. A wave of fear passed through her as she watched him run off. She knew that he could look out for himself, she was just going to have to get used to this feeling of fear that would hang over her whenever she watched him walk away.

She plunged her hands in her packed as she passed through the doors after practice and made her way into the cool autumn air and began to head to the library when her fingers found something cold and smooth. She slowly pulled Peter’s tie out of her pocket and stopped walking.

Valarie could wait.

She buzzed Peter’s apt twice before May’s voice came over the intercom.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mrs. Parker, it’s MJ, Michelle, Anna’s Niece. I think I found something that belongs to you?”

“Of course, come open up!” Her voice called out as the building door buzzed open.

Michelle had been to Peter’s apartment before, but something about it now felt sacred, like she was trespassing in his personal space.

“How are you, sweetheart? Did you say over the intercom you’re going by MJ now?” May asked as she ushered MJ through the door.

“Uh, yeah, this kid I babysit for started calling me that and it just sorta stuck…” she explained.

“It’s cool, like Michael Jackson”

“Or Michael Jordan.”

“You do have the coolest initials.”

“Thanks…”

“So you said you had something of mine?” May asked.

“Um, yeah,” MJ said, not sure how exactly she would explain why she had May’s nephews tie, so she just pulled it out of her pocket and held the crumpled tie out.

“I, uh, found this in the hall at school…” She said vaguely.

May’s face had softened as she gently took the wrinkled ball of fabric from MJ’s hands.

“Thank you,” she said softly her eyes didn’t move from her hands hands. When she did look up to MJ there were tears bribing in her eyes. “I’’m sorry. I don’t mean to get emotional.”

“No, it’s fine.” Said Michelle quickly.

“This was Ben’s.” May sighed as a single tear rolled off her cheek. “Thank you for getting it back to me.” She said as she began to wrap the tie around her palm like MJ had been doing herself ll weekend.

“I was around your age when I met him,” said May.

“Yeah?” MJ asked. She had always liked Ben, he was funny and generous, but she didn’t really know anything about him.

“He was cute in a shy way and he was nice and artistic and I was so smitten with him. He had no idea for years. He was terrified of me, I mean, I was popular and he was shy. I must have been asked out by every other boy in school twice before he ever worked up the nerve to talk to me.” Said May, her voice soft with the glow of memory.

“Why didn’t you just talk to him?” MJ asked

“I don’t know… He intimidated me,” May explained, “but he also excited me and we were so young. It’s hard to reconcile all those things at once, it seems easier to just try and ignore it than try and confront a real and capable connecting with yourself and someone else. You're not supposed to find your soulmate in high school.”

“But you did.”

“I did.”

“Do you think you’ll ever, I dunno, move on? That sounds wrong, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be disrespectful-“ MJ asked

“No, sweetly it's fine, its…..” May paused, struggling to find the words “I’ll always love Ben, it never stops hurting that he's gone, but every day I get a little bit stronger, I get a little bit better at living without him. Maybe someday I’ll fall in love with someone else but I don’t know. Something like that, what we had, it doesn't come along every day. I can’t make it happen or force it too, it either will or it won’t. What we had was something I don’t think I’ll ever find again, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

MJ left May’s apartment feeling lighter than she had in weeks. It was as though she had been carrying the weight of problems that never had existed. She was finally feeling like herself which was strange because she also felt as though everything had changed. She wasn’t the same person she was before. Something in her had sniffed and changed her irreconcilably but the idea didn’t scare her anymore. It seemed like the right kind of change and suddenly the world seemed transformed.

She was enjoying this new found confidence and sense of self until a slick black cat nearly mowed her down when she stepped off the sidewalk.

"What the hell!" She screamed slamming her palms down on the roof of the car when the back door flew open and Peter' head popped up from behind it.

"Michelle - Mj! Are you alright?" He asked looking frantic when the driver of the car came stumbling out as well.

"You trying to get yourself killed! What were you doing in the middle of the road!" The man with the red face howled.

"Me? You're the one behind the wheel, watch where you're going!" She shouted back.

"MJ, you ok?" Peter asked again.

"I'm fine,"

"You know this idiot?" Peter driver spat.

"Excuse me?" MJ could felt blood flooding her hear in as he anger escalated.

"MJ! This is Happy- Happy Hogan, he works for Mr. Stark." Peter stuttered.

"I'm the Asset Manager!” Happy corrected.

"So your working for Stark again?" MJ asked Peter ignoring Happy.

"Yeah, sort of, it's complicated..." Peter said eying Happy nervously.

"Congratulations, I guess..." Michelle mumbled. She knew nothing was going to stop Peter from being Spider-Man but now she also understood that nothing would ever stop her from worrying about him. For a moment something inside of Michelle fell and she knew that she couldn't hide her concern for him. She quickly regained herself and hoped that Peter hadn't noticed.

"I'm not gonna just let you get away with skipping practices like Liz did you know," she suddenly spat at him.

"Oh! Yeah, I mean, I understand, it makes sense, I guess I can work something out with Mr. Stark..." Peter gulped looking to Happy.

"I'm also not going to have nearly as many practices as she did," Michelle said trying not to laugh at the look of relief that Peter couldn't hide that washed over his face.

"Yeah?" He sighed.

"Yeah, some of us have lives," MJ said rolling her eyes.

"Hey, Peter! Maybe flirt with your girlfriend without my door to between you!" Happy shouted. "Some of us have important jobs and places to be."

"I'm sorry- she's not- it's not- we're just" Peter stuttered shutting the door and quickly stepping away from the car.

"How important could your job be if you're shuttling the teen intern around?" Michelle asked.

"You know, you remind me of someone," said Happy pointing at MJ before turning to Peter. "You hang on to this one kid, she'll keep you in line."

"That's supposed to be your job," Peter shot back.

"Seriously, you really are a big-wig at Stark Industries." MJ laughed.

"Alright, I don't need this. I don't need to be ridiculed by people who can't even drive." Happy muttered as he climbed back behind the wheel.

MJ turned back to see Peter was smiling which made her feel weightless. It was the first time she had seen him looking happy in weeks.

"Congratulations, on getting your internship back, you deserve it." Said MJ, surprised at how much she meant it.

"Thanks," Peter said looking at his shoes. The impossibly awkward superhero. "And, I promise, it's not gonna be like before. You guys can count on me."

"I hope so until you prove it I'm going to have to demote you to the first alternate. You understand right? It's only fair to Flash and the rest of the team.

"Oh!" Peter's face fell, "Yeah, yeah. I understand. Of course..." he stuttered before noticing MJ smirking at him. "You're just joking aren't you?"

MJ friend and simply turned to walk away.

"Very funny MJ, you think you can mess with me but I know you too well! You would never give Flash the validation!" Peter called after her but MJ just flipped him off over her shoulder without looking back.

Gayle may have had a point about letting boys suffer.

Whether she liked it or not, MJ couldn't deny now that her whole heart belonged to Peter Parker. She knew he would never see her in the same way and yet she still hoped that he might. He didn't know it, but he needed someone in his life to keep him grounded, someone who loved him for who Peter Parker is so he wouldn't just dissolve behind the Spider-Man.

She understood that she needed someone like him just as much as he needed her. If her time around Liz had taught her anything it was that she needed to open herself up, it was easier to be a loner, but it also meant that you wouldn't have anyone in your corner when you really need them.

MJ could tell him that she knows who he is, bother behind and without the mask, but she knew she wouldn't do that. Maybe Peter would trust her enough to keep that secret and tell her himself, but she wouldn't force him into trusting her. It was something that would take time and patience. Maybe he would never tell her, she decided that it was enough that she just knew.

She could also tell him how she felt about him, but something about that felt wrong to her. Peter had more than enough to deal with without his new team captain professing her feelings had for him. It would only make things more complicated than they already were. Some things were best left unsaid. Maybe one day she would be brave enough to say something, or perhaps their stories would collide and something will just spark. She was ready to accept that Peter would probably never look at her and feel his breath catch or heart pound against his ribs. But maybe that could change, maybe it wouldn’t, but something told her that someday it should, and it would.

For now, she was happy that she could give her feelings a name.

There was something poetic about unrequited love anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was inspired but angry fans that said Michelle couldn’t be a suitable Mary Jane substitute because she wasn’t the most popular girl at school. (Arguments that she can’t be MJ because she isn’t white or doesn’t have red hair are baseless and I don’t recognize them because it’s just coded racism) 
> 
> I took Mary Jane’s backstory and made one change. Mary Jane Watson dealt with her crappy home life as an extrovert, she saw out the adoration of her peers, so for Michelle, I gave her identical circumstances to Mary Jane and just let he respond to that like an introvert would.
> 
> I really love this spin on a character that I have had a rocky relationship with as a comic book reader and am even more excited to see what Marvel has in store for her in the future.
> 
> Thanks for Reading!  
> Smash Buttons if You Dig It

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Spider-Man Homecoming and the Amazing Spider-Man Comic Book created By Stan Lee and Steve Ditko


End file.
